CHARACTERISTICS   OF 
THE  SOUTHERN   NEGRO 


H.  RANDI.E,  A.  M.(  1,1,.  D. 


CHARACTERISTICS  OF 
THE  SOUTHERN  NEGRO 


By 

E.  H.  RANDLE,  A.  M.,  LL.  D. 

v\ 


NEW  YORK  AND  WASHINGTON 

THE  NEALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

1910 


H 


COPYRIGHT,  1910,  BY 
THE  NEALE   PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


To  Mrs.  Ella  Roberts  Randle,  my  wife,  who  has  been 

a  present  help  and  an  inspiration  to  me,  this 

volume  is  affectionately  dedicated 


202050 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  CONDITIONS  AND  CHANGES  IN  FREEDOM     .  9 

II  SOME  AFRICAN  TRIBES 17 

III  THE  NEGRO  CONSUMES  MORE  THAN  HE 

EARNS 24 

IV  THE  IMPROVIDENCE  OF  THE  NEGRO     .     .  32 
V  THE  HISTORIC  NEGRO 37 

VI  CHANGES  WROUGHT  IN   THE   NEGRO   BY 

His  FREEDOM 46 

VII  WANT  OF  INVENTIVE   POWERS  AND  ME 
CHANICAL  SKILL  THE  CROWDING-OUT 

PROCESS 51 

VIII  THE  NEGRO  THE  MOST  CONTENTED  OF  ALL 

RACES 57 

IX  THE  NEGRO  LIVES  IN  THE  PRESENT     .     .  66 

X  THE    ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE    FOLLY      .     .  75 

XI  THE  CARPETBAGGERS  AND  RIOTS     ...  85 

XII  A   NEGRO  AUDIENCE 94 

XIII  SINGING,  CORNSHUCKINGS,  AND  RELIGIOUS 

REVIVALS 99 

XIV  PLURALITY  OF  THE  HUMAN  RACE     .      .  108 
XV  MISCEGENATION  AND  MIXED  RACES     .     .  117 


THE  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 
THE  SOUTHERN  NEGRO 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 


CHAPTER    I 

CONDITIONS    AND    CHANGES    IN    FREEDOM 

IT  is  strange  how  knowingly  people  who  have 
but  a  glancing  acquaintance  with  the  negroes  of 
the  South,  can  write  up  their  character.  Various 
prominent  writers  from  the  North  occasionally 
come  South,  visit  Booker  T.  Washington,  Bishop 
Cottrell,  a  colored  bishop,  and  a  few  others,  and 
then  write  glowing  accounts  of  the  progress  and 
development  of  the  negroes.  Their  reports  re 
mind  me  of  some  of  the  reports  of  our  early  mis 
sionaries  to  Africa,  who,  in  their  zeal,  gave  most 
encouraging  statements  of  the  spread  of  the  Gos 
pel  amongst  the  benighted  negroes,  and  afterward 
the  results  of  their  labors  could  no  more  be  traced 
than  could  their  tracks  in  the  desert  sands. 

In  the  North  American  Review  of  June, 
1908,  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie,  one  of  America's 
strongest  thinkers,  wrote  most  knowingly  and  un- 
learnedly  about  the  wonderful  progress  of  the 
Southern  negroes.  Such  writers  of  judgment  do 
the  South  a  great  injury  without  being  aware  of 
it.  It  is  like  learned  preachers,  who,  without  a 
knowledge  of  science,  try  to  discredit  the  teach 
ings  of  geology  by  the  Scriptures;  or  like 


10  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

Haeckel,  Huxley  and  others  trying  to  prove 
by  chemistry  that  the  Christian  religion  is 
false — that  Christ  was  a  man  and  not  a  god.  If 
Mr.  Carnegie  will  come  South,  lease  a  large  plan 
tation  in  the  Delta  and  try  farming  a  few  years 
with  free  negro  labor,  it  will  knock  all  his  phi 
losophy  and  preconceived  notions  into  invisible 
vapor,  and  will  send  his  philanthropy  for  the 
negro  beyond  the  perpetual  snow  line.  Our 
Northern  friends  know  as  little  how  to  make  al 
lowance  for  the  negro  after  they  have  tried  him, 
as  they  know  how  to  write  up  his  character  be 
fore  they  try  him. 

The  Southern  planters  who  have  had  long  ac 
quaintance  and  dealings  with  all  kinds  and  varie 
ties  of  negroes, — no  picked  few  or  specialized 
class, — both  before  the  war  and  since,  certainly 
ought  to  be  the  best  judges  of  negro  character. 

All  that  I  shall  write  about  the  character  and 
habits  of  the  negro  has  been  gathered  from  these 
planters,  with  a  few  of  my  own  observations 
thrown  in.  As  to  my  own  qualifications,  I  will 
add  that  I  was  raised  among  negroes,  in  a  sec 
tion  where  the  two  races  were  about  equally  di 
vided;  inherited  negroes,  was  brought  up  among 
them;  I  played  with  them,  fought  with  them, 
worked  with  them,  but  never  slept  or  ate  with 
them. 


CHANGES   IN   FREEDOM  II 

In  my  boyhood  I  often  spent  a  day  or  night  with 
some  neighbor  boy,  and  as  white  boys  in  those 
days  were  fond  of  going  out  to  the  cabins  to  hear 
the  negroes  talk  I,  like  the  others,  saw  into  a 
great  many  negro  cabins  and  had  good  opportuni 
ties  for  studying  negro  character  and  habits.  In 
those  days  most  of  the  negroes  had  more  liberty 
without  freedom  than  they  now  have  with 
freedom. 

In  studying  the  race  question  we  must  not  for 
get  some  psychical  and  physical  differences.  The 
mind  of  the  white  man  does  not  attain  its  full 
growth  till  about  five  to  ten  years  after  the  full 
growth  of  the  body,  while  the  mind  of  the  negro 
matures  several  years  sooner  than  his  body. 
There  seems  to  be  much  less  difference  in  the  men 
tal  capacity  of  the  children  of  the  two  races  than 
there  is  in  the  adults ;  but,  before  the  twenties  are 
reached,  the  breach  begins  to  widen,  and  con 
tinues  to  widen  fifteen  or  more  years,  and  then 
continues  after  maturity  of  capacity  to  widen  by 
training  and  in  information.  By  maturity  we 
mean  the  cessation  of  the  growth  of  capacity  for 
improvement.  But  the  mind  and  body  both  may 
be  greatly  strengthened  by  training  after  maturity, 
as  the  scholar  improves  his  mind,  and  the  athlete, 
his  body. 

Mr.  Winwood  Read,  a  distinguished  African 


12  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

traveler,  gives  the  following  physical  description 
of  the  negro: 

"  His  skin  is  very  black,  excepting  the  palms 
and  soles  of  his  feet,  which  are  of  a  dirty  yellow. 
In  them  the  coloring  matter  has  been  removed 
by  friction;  it  can,  however,  be  always  traced  in 
the  deep  lines  of  the  hand.  It  appears  to  be  most 
abundant  on  the  knuckles,  the  knees,  and  the  el 
bow  joints. 

'*  The  skin  is  very  thick,  especially  on  the  palms 
of  the  hands  and  the  soles  of  the  feet.  Touch 
these,  and  they  feel  like  wood.  A  negro  will  take 
up  a  live  coal  in  his  hand  and  light  his  pipe  with 
it  without  suffering  pain.  But,  with  the  exception 
of  these  parts,  the  skin  of  the  negro  is  peculiarly 
smooth.  It  can  only  be  compared  to  fine  black 
velvet. 

"The  hair  of  the  typical  negro  is  short  and 
crisp,  and  closely  resembles  wool. 

"  The  forehead  is  low  and  compressed;  the  nose 
flat;  the  lips  thick  and  brutal;  the  mouth  project 
ing,  presents  the  appearance  of  a  muzzle.  As  in 
the  lower  animals,  the  brain  retreats  to  the  back 
of  the  head,  and  the  organ  of  gluttony  becomes 
the  character  of  the  face. 

"The  heel  is  flat  and  long;  the  ankle  is  raised 
only  from  one  and  one-eighth  to  one  and  one-half 
inches  above  the  ground.  The  toes  are  small, 


CHANGES   IN   FREEDOM  13 

and,  as  in  the  apes,  the  great  toe  is  separated  from 
the  others  by  a  wide  space. 

"  The  foot  is  often  used  by  the  negro  as  a 
hand.  The  natives  of  equatorial  Africa  do  not 
climb  a  tree,  as  we  do,  by  '  swarming/  but  by 
clasping  them  with  their  feet.  The  natives  of  the 
Gambia,  when  fishing,  hold  their  line  between  the 
great  toe  and  the  next.  When  a  Kru-man  is  sew 
ing  anything  he  holds  his  work  between  his  toes. 
And  the  Wollofs  will  frequently  steal  articles  with 
their  feet. 

"The  virile  member  is  much  larger  than  is 
found  in  Europeans,  excepting  in  those  who  are 
idiotic.  It  is  one  of  the  chief  seats  of  color. 
When  the  negro  child  is  born  it  has  a  black  ring 
around  the  virile  member;  a  reddish  mark  on  the 
nail,  and  another  in  the  corner  of  the  eye.  These 
are  the  last  signs  also  by  which  a  negro  descend 
ant  can  be  distinguished. 

"According  to  some  writers,  the  same  secretion 
forms  the  beard  and  propagates  the  human  spe 
cies.  The  negro  seldom  has  any  hair  upon  his  face ; 
it  is  rarely  abundant,  and  he  rarely  has  a  great 
number  of  children.  There  is  also  a  peculiarity 
in  his  voice  by  which  it  can  be  distinguished.  It 
is  not  unlike  that  of  a  eunuch. 

"  The  stature  of  the  negro  is  stunted;  the  knees 
are  bent;  the  calves  weak;  the  upper  part  of  the 


1 4  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

thigh  is  thin;  the  head  large  and  sunk  between 
the  shoulders;  and  the  whole  form  angular  and 
badly  shaped. 

'The  skull  is  extremely  thick.  If  a  negro 
wishes  to  break  a  thick  stick,  he  does  not  break 
it  across  his  knee,  as  we  do,  but  across  his  head. 
The  power  of  his  skull  in  resisting  a  blow  is  some 
thing  marvelous.  When  I  was  in  the  Senegal  I 
saw  a  most  remarkable  case  at  the  military  hos 
pital,  St.  Louis.  A  Wollof  soldier,  in  the  French 
service,  had  been  shot  at  from  a  distance  of  fif 
teen  yards.  The  ball  struck  the  os  frontis  and 
had  flattened  against  it  as  if  it  had  struck  a  stone 
wall.*  .  .  . 

"  It  has  been  discovered  by  Iruner  Beaj,  Gra- 
tiold,  Waitz,  and  other  eminent  anatomists  that 
there  exist  internal  differences  equally  as  signifi 
cant;  that  the  blood  and  bile,  and,  according  to 
some,  the  semen,  is  different  from  that  of  the 
Europeans;  that  in  the  skeleton,  the  bones  are 
larger,  whiter  and  thicker;  that  the  growth  of  the 
brain  in  the  negro,  as  in  the  ape,  is  sooner  ar 
rested  than  in  those  of  our  race ;  f  that  its  convolu 
tions  are  less  numerous  and  more  massive;  that 
its  gray  substance  is  of  a  darker  9olor;  that  the 

*  I  am  able  to  vouch  for  the  truth  of  the  story. 
fThis  is  in  accordance  with  what  I  have  said  about  the  ma 
turity  of  the  mind. 


CHANGES    IN    FREEDOM  15 

brain  itself  is  of  a  smoky  tint,  and  that  the  pia 
mater  contains  brown  spots,  which  are  never 
found  in  the  brain  of  the  European. 

"  Therefore,  in  the  muzzle-like  extension  of 
the  jaws,  in  the  manual  application  of  the  foot, 
and  in  the  early  cessation  of  the  brain-growth,  the 
negro,  speaking  physically,  approaches  the  ape. 

"  In  his  flattened  nose,  elongated  cranium,  sim 
plicity  of  cerebral  convolutions,  rounded  larynx, 
and  less  strongly  marked  curves  of  the  vertical 
column,  the  negro  approaches  the  child;  for  all 
these  are  found  in  the  foetus  of  the  child  of  the 
Aryan  race  in  its  different  periods  of  de 
velopment. 

"And  in  the  curvature  of  his  arteries,  in  the 
flatness  of  his  cornea,  in  the  fulness  of  his  muscles, 
in  his  general  lack  of  enthusiasm,  and  love  of  re 
pose,  the  negro  presents  the  characteristics  of  old 
age. 

"  Thus  it  has  been  proven  by  measurements, 
by  microscopes,  by  analysis,  that  the  negro  is 
something  between  a  child,  a  dotard,  and  a  beast. 
I  cannot  struggle  against  the  sacred  facts  of 
science.  But  I  contend  that  it  is  only  degrada 
tion;  that  it  is  a  disease;  that  it  is  not  characteris 
tic  of  the  African  continent,  and  that  it  is  con 
fined  only  to  a  small  geographical  area."' 

*  "  Savage  Africa,"  by  Winwood  Read,  p.  397. 


1 6  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

These  statements  have  not  been  denied  by  the 
ethnologists  and  biologists  of  the  scientific  world, 
but  have  been  generally  assented  to. 

To  be  fair  with  Mr.  Read,  I  must  say  he  did  not 
describe  the  typical  negro,  but  a  class  below  the 
highest  type  of  the  negro  race.  As  to  the  extent 
of  the  area,  it  is  no  small  portion  of  the  west 
coast  of  Africa.  Fully  half  of  Africa,  the 
northern  half,  is  inhabited  by  the  Aryan  race,  or 
of  races  whose  blood  is  mixed  with  a  strong  in 
fusion  of  Aryan  blood.  Mr.  Read  believes  in 
the  unity  of  the  human  race. 


CHAPTER    II 

SOME   AFRICAN   TRIBES 

THAT  we  may  better  understand  the  Southern 
negro,  we  will  give  a  short  chapter  on  a  few  of  the 
leading  tribes  of  Africa,  from  the  highest  to  the 
lowest. 

We  now  approach  a  singular  phase  in  eth 
nology,  or  rather  in  the  relational  appearance  of 
the  negro  to  the  white  man — a  fact  which  denies 
that  the  negro  and  the  Aryan  are  of  the  same 
original  or  Adamic  origin. 

If  the  Ovambos,  the  Damaras,  the  Fans,  the 
Hottentots  are  degenerate  Zulus,  it  is  singular, 
that  in  proportion  as  they  are  degenerate  they  are 
found  of  lighter  color  and  of  a  greater  resem 
blance  to  the  white  man.  In  all  domestic  species, 
as  I  have  shown  in  another  work,  loss  of  color 
is  one  of  the  first  signs  of  degenerate  variation,  so 
these  lower  tribes  must  have  lost  color  in  their 
evolution  downward  from  the  Zulu.  The  tribes 
below  the  Zulus  occupy  largely  more  than  nine- 
tenths  of  negro  Africa.  We  must  judge  from 
this  that  the  negro  race  in  Africa  is  traveling  to 
extinction. 

17 


1 8  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

The  Zulus  or  Kaffirs  "  are  darker  than  these 
lighter  colored  tribes,  but  not  so  black  as 
the  negroes  of  the  West  Coast.  Their  hair 
is  crisp,  short  and  curled,  but  not  so  woolly 
as  that  of  the  negro  (of  the  West  Coast)  ;  their 
lips,  though  large  when  compared  with  those  of 
the  Europeans,  are  small  when  compared  with 
those  of  the  negro.*  Their  form  is  finely  mod 
eled,  their  stature  tall,  their  limbs  straight,  their 
forehead  high,  their  expression  intelligent,  and  al 
together  this  group  of  mankind  affords  as  fine  ex 
amples  of  the  human  form  as  can  be  found  any 
where  on  the  earth." 

The  Zulus  seem  to  be  of  a  less  variable  type 
than  the  other  tribes.  Great  variations  among  in 
dividuals  of  any  species,  whether  in  form,  color, 
or  habits,  is  a  sign  of  degeneracy. 

The  Tonga,  the  Bechuana,  the  Ovambo,  the 
Namequa,  and  some  others,  are  classified  by  some 
with  the  Zulus;  but  they  are  lighter  in  color  and 
resemble  the  European  much  more  than  the  Zu 
lus  do. 

The  Bechuanas:  "The  Bechuana  character  is 
frank  and  sociable,  which,  however,  does  not  arise 

*  Mr.  Read  does  not  class  the  Zulus  with  the  negro.  He 
strangely  considers  the  inhabitants  of  the  West  Coast  alone  as 
true  negroes. 


SOME  AFRICAN   TRIBES  19 

from  a  benevolent  disposition.  They  are  exceed 
ingly  vindictive  and  revengeful,  but  easily  pro 
pitiated  with  gifts.  From  the  king  to  the  slave, 
theft  is  a  peculiar  vice.  The  women  are  tenacious 
of  their  toilet,  appearing  to  prefer  the  garb  of 
Mother  Eve.  They  are  masculine,  short,  stout, 
and  clumsy.  They  have  little  regard  for  human 
life.  A  husband  may  kill  his  wife  if  he  likes,  with 
out  any  particular  notice  being  taken  of  it."* 

The  Bechuanas  have  no  notion  of  a  superior 
being.  "  I  have  often  wished,"  says  Mr.  Moffat, 
"  I  could  find  something  by  which  I  could  lay  hold 
on  the  minds  of  the  natives;  an  altar  to  the  un 
known  God,  the  faith  of  their  ancestors,  the  im 
mortality  of  any  association,  but  nothing  of  the 
kind  ever  floated  through  their  minds.  They 
looked  upon  the  sun  with  the  eye  of  an  ox."  t 

These  stand  about  next  to  the  Zulus.  We  have 
descriptive  evidence  from  many  reliable  authors 
that  the  following  tribes  differ  in  appearance  from 
the  Zulus  in  an  approach  to  the  Europeans, 
though  none  of  these  authors  noted  this  fact. 
They  are  all  lighter  in  color;  some,  the  color 
nearly  of  a  ripe  plum,  some  a  sort  of  dark  milk- 
and-coffee  color,  etc.,  those  of  the  smallest  hands 
and  feejt  being  lighter  in  color  and  of  less  vigor. 

*  Anderson,    p.   450.  t  Anderson,    p.    339. 


2O  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

They  are  the  Ovambos,  the  Demaras,  the  Mak- 
ololos,  the  Wagogos,  the  Neam  Nams,  the  Fans, 
and  some  others.  The  lighter  colored  ones  are 
generally  nearer  the  equator.  Not  many  of  any 
of  these  tribes,  I  think,  were  brought  to  America, 
yet  we  see  some  representatives  of  them.  We 
sometimes  are  mistaken  when  we  judge  a  negro 
to  have  a  tinge  of  white  blood.  It  is  one  from 
some  of  these  tribes. 

The  Hottentots:  Having  now  come  to  such 
low  grades,  near  the  bottom,  we  must  note  more 
closely. 

Neither  in  color  nor  in  general  aspects  do  the 
Hottentots  resemble  the  dark  races  around  them. 
Their  complexion  is  sallow  and  much  like  that  of 
a  very  dark  person  suffering  from  jaundice.  In 
deed  the  complexion  of  the  Hottentot  much  re 
sembles  that  of  the  Chinese. 

In  shape,  the  Hottentots  alter  strangely  ac 
cording  to  age.  When  children  they  are  not 
agreeable  objects;  if  tolerably  well  fed,  they  lose 
their  strange  shape  when  they  approach  the  period 
of  youth;  and  as  young  men  and  girls  they  are  al 
most  perfect  in  form,  though  thin  faces  are  not 
entitled  to  as  much  praise.  But  they  do  not  re 
tain  this  beauty  of  form  for  any  long  period,  some 
few  years  generally  comprehending  the  beginning 
and  the  end.  "  In  five  or  six  years  after  their  ar- 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 


SOME  AFRICAN   TRIBES  21 

rival  at  womanhood,"  writes  Burchell,  "  the  fresh 
plumpness  of  youth  gives  way  to  the  wrinkles  of 
age,  and  unless  viewed  with  an  eye  of  commis 
eration  and  philanthropy,  we  would  be  inclined 
to  pronounce  them  the  most  disgusting  of  hu 
man  beings."  The  existence  of  this  light-colored 
race  in  such  a  locality  affords  proof  that  complex 
ion  is  not  entirely  by  climate.  These  and  other 
pale-skinned  tribes  live  close  to  the  tropics,  while 
the  Esquimaux,  who  live  amid  eternal  ice,  are 
often  so  dark  they  might  almost  be  mistaken  for 
negroes. 

"  Unlike  the  Kaffirs,  who  are  the  most  super 
stitious  of  mankind,  the  Hottentots  are  entirely 
free  from  superstition,  as  they  have  not  the  least 
conception  whatever  of  any  religious  sentiment. 
The  world  forms  the  limit  of  all  their  ideas,  and 
they  seem,  so  far  as  is  known,  equally  ignorant  of 
a  creator  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul  " 
(Wood).  In  this  respect  they  are  on  a  level  with 
the  beast,  sunken  too  low  even  to  be  superstitious. 

The  Bosjemens:  The  Bosjemens,  or  Bush 
men,  have  no  language  to  express  God,  spirit, 
immortality,  a  life  beyond  the  grave,  or  any  super 
stitious  belief.  They  have  no  traces  of  a  lost 
civilization  —  nor  have  any  of  the  negro  tribes  of 
Africa.  They  abandon  their  parents  when  old, 
and  instruction  and  moralizing  to  them  is  as  in- 


22  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

effectual  as  teaching  monkeys  to  draw  portraits. 
Haeckel  of  Jena  uses  them  as  a  connecting  link 
between  the  apes  and  man. 

I  will  not  describe  the  Obongos  or  Pigmies,  as 
the  slave  stealers  would  not  have  them. 

The  West  Coast  Africans :  These  are  the  ones 
Mr.  Winwood  Read  described  as  the  typical  ne 
gro,  so  we  will  have  little  else  to  say  of  them. 
They  are  the  blackest  of  all  negroes,  large,  strong, 
and  capable  of  great  endurance,  and  the  most  in 
different  to  suffering  of  human  beings,  hence  they 
are  cruel  in  proportion;  this  is  as  much  because 
they  are  but  little  sensitive  to  suffering  themselves; 
sympathy  of  any  kind  is  almost  as  absent  from 
their  nature  as  color  is  from  their  skin. 

Mr.  Read,  I  think,  degrades  their  strength  and 
endurance  a  little  lower  than  others  do.  We  see 
frequent  specimens  of  these  West  Coast  negroes 
in  America.  We  can  distinguish  them  by  their 
coal  blackness,  stout  frames,  and  coarse  features. 

Graded  in  the  scale  of  negroes  they  are  below 
the  Zulus,  Ovambos,  Bechuanas  and  the  Damaras, 
and  perhaps  some  others  we  have  mentioned,  but 
scarcely  below  some  of  these,  and  they  are  far 
ther  above  the  Hottentots  than  they  are  below  the 
Zulus.  They  much  less  resemble  the  Europeans 
than  the  Zulus  do,  while  the  other  degenerate 


SOME  AFRICAN  TRIBES  23 

tribes  resemble  the  Europeans  more  than  do  the 
Zulus. 

We  have  now  given  most  of  the  tribes  from 
which  the  American  slaves  derive  their  origin. 
They  are  so  mixed  up  that  we  can  now  defi 
nitely  trace  but  few  individuals.  We  oftener  see 
examples  of  the  West  Coast  African  than  of  the 
others.  The  characteristics  of  these  African  ne 
groes  will  help  us  to  understand  the  American 
negro. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    NEGRO    CONSUMES    MORE    THAN    HE    EARNS 

WE  are  of  the  opinion  that  the  negro  consumes 
more  than  he  earns,  and  that  the  difference  is  in 
creasing. 

For  a  few  years  after  the  war  the  farmers  made 
some  money,  for  the  negroes  were,  at  that  time, 
not  far  from  their  training  and  habits;  and  while 
they  did  not  work  so  well  as  they  did  in  slavery, 
they  worked  better  than  they  have  at  any  time 
since.  In  the  nineties  I  asked  numerous  planters 
who  had  had  much  to  do  with  negro  farm  la 
borers,  both  before  emancipation  and  after,  the  fol 
lowing  question :  Have  the  negroes  in  the  upland 
counties  produced  as  much  as  they  have  con 
sumed  since  the  war?  The  uniform  answer  was, 
"  They  have  not."  But  the  answers  varied  as 
to  how  much  they  lacked.  A  few  planters  said 
they  had  not  made  enough,  upon  an  average,  to 
pay  land  rents.  The  average  answer  was,  "  They 
have  made  a  living  and  paid  half  rents  for  their 
lands."  To  make  a  living  with  rents  half  free, 
is  consuming  more  than  they  produce.  As  an  evi- 

24 


CONSUMES   MORE    THAN    HE    EARNS  25 

dence  of  this,  the  value  of  uplands  fell  to  about 
half  price. 

Another  evidence  of  this:  The  sections  where 
there  are  the  most  negroes  are  the  least  prosperous. 
Compare  Marshall  County,  Mississippi,  with 
Henry  County,  Tennessee.  Before  the  war,  the 
people  of  Marshall  were  prosperous  and  were 
rapidly  accumulating,  and  the  negro  population 
was,  I  judge,  about  double  the  white  inhabitants. 
The  people  of  Henry  County  were  industrious 
and  slowly  accumulating  property.  Both  were  early 
settled  counties.  Marshall  County  was  worth,  I 
judge,  about  five  times  what  Henry  was.  Now, 
Marshall  is  left  far  in  the  rear,  and  Henry  has 
shot  out  well  in  advance.  We  cannot  account  for 
this  in  any  other  way  than  that  negro  labor  is  con 
suming  more  than  it  is  producing.  I  could  give 
many  other  illustrations,  showing  the  fewer  the 
negroes,  the  greater  the  prosperity.  Making,  of 
course,  proper  allowance  for  the  difference  in  the 
quality  of  the  lands. 

We  must  not  compare  the  rich  alluvial  lands  of 
the  Yazoo  Delta,  where  there  are  ten  negroes  to 
one  white  person,  with  the  impoverished  ridges 
along  the  Tennessee  River  in  Tennessee,  where 
there  are  fifty  white  men  to  one  negro,  and  where 
poverty  reigns  in  log  cabins.  Wherever  there 
are  few  negroes  in  good  upland  counties  there  is 


26  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

enterprise  and  progress;  and  where  there  are 
many  negroes  in  such  counties,  there  is  retro 
gress. 

The  farmers  will  tell  you  that  a  very  large  ma 
jority  of  the  colored  race  is  in  debt  to  the  white 
race  and  that  with  not  the  slightest  prospects  of 
ever  paying.  The  white  people  would  be  well 
off  if  they  only  had  what  is  due  them  from  the 
negroes.  I  know  many  large  farms  that  were 
entirely  consumed  by  the  tenants  during  the  first 
twenty  or  thirty  years  and  were  sold  out  and  left 
destitute. 

Many  of  the  most  successful  farmers  before  the 
sixties,  found  themselves  unable,  after  the  war,  to 
make  a  living  with  free  labor  on  large  plantations, 
but  the  laborers  on  the  farm  got  their  living.  I 
will  narrate  a  single  case  well  known.  Mr.  H. 
tried  to  farm  on  a  large  and  well-ordered 
plantation  of  his  own,  a  farm  on  which  he  had 
formerly  realized  handsome  profits.  The  first 
year  he  came  out  in  debt,  the  second  year,  still 
deeper  in  debt.  He  then  called  up  his  oldest  son, 
a  young  man  of  energy  and  good  habits,  and  said 
to  him,  "  If  I  run  the  farm  a  few  more  years  it 
will  require  the  sale  of  the  farm  to  pay  our  debts. 
I  now  turn  over  the  entire  management  of  the 
farm  to  you;  I  have  made  a  failure.  I  have  no 
advice  to  give.  Trust  your  own  judgment." 


CONSUMES    MORE   THAN    HE    EARNS  27 

The  young  man  took  the  lead  and  did  well.  He 
is  now  an  old  man  and  is  still  prosperous. 

I  have  often  heard  the  remark  that  the  owners 
of  negroes  before  the  war  were  usually  unsuccess 
ful  farmers  with  free  negro  laborers,  and  the 
saying  seems  to  be  true.  The  chief  cause  of  it  was 
that  they  trusted  the  negroes  too  much.  In  crop 
gathering  time,  when  a  hand  would  foresee  that 
he  would  have  nothing  at  the  end — that  he  had 
already  consumed  all  that  would  be  due  him,  he 
would  leave  and  hire  out  to  some  other  man. 
In  this  way  the  planter  would  not  only  lose  the 
labor,  but  sometimes  the  part  of  the  crop  the  hand 
had  deserted.  For  hands  in  crop  gathering  are 
scarce  and  it  is  often  a  question  with  a  planter 
how  to  secure  enough  labor  to  gather  his  cotton. 

I  am  aware  that  statistics  show  that  wealth,  in 
large  quantities,  is  acquired  by  negroes,  and  I 
know  a  few  scattered  negroes — mostly  mulattos — 
commenced  accumulating  from  the  beginning.  It 
would  be  a  sad  comment,  indeed,  if  none  of  them 
had  acquired  property.  Great  wonder  is  made 
that  the  negroes  of  Georgia  now  own  fifty  million 
dollars'  worth  of  property.  Doubtless  half  of  this 
belongs  to  men  whose  blood  is  tinged  with  a  Cau 
casian  streak,  but  we  cannot  attribute  such  wealth 
to  negro  energy  any  more  than  to  the  energy  in 
fused  by  his  Caucasian  blood. 


28  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

Wholesale  numbers  look  large.  There  are 
about  one  million  of  negroes  in  Mississippi.  Sup 
pose  one  in  one  hundred  of  these  had  saved  five 
thousand  dollars,  that  would  make  fifty  million 
for  the  negroes  of  Mississippi.  The  fact  is  the 
great  body  of  the  negroes  have  little  or  nothing, 
and  are  getting  less  reliable  as  laborers  every  year. 

Within  the  last  decade,  or  rather  since  the 
country  recovered  from  the  shock  of  '93,  negroes 
have  shown  a  tendency  to  buy  homes,  and  a  larger 
per  cent,  are  now  self-sustaining  and  prosperous 
than  at  any  previous  time,  and  a  larger  per  cent, 
are  utterly  worthless. 

Before  the  war  an  able-bodied  negro  in  north 
Mississippi  would  hire  out  for  $200  to  $250  a 
year,  and  his  board  and  clothes.  Now  he  does 
well  to  get  half  that  and  his  board.  This  is  the 
difference  between  slave  labor  and  free  colored 
labor. 

The  colored  women  usually  make  their  own  liv 
ing,  but,  like  the  men,  only  at  about  half  the  wages 
paid  before  the  war.  For  some  years  they  did 
full  half  work;  now  they  rarely  perform  more 
than  one-fourth  the  amount  of  labor  that  they  did 
in  slavery.  For  a  family  of  two  or  three  persons, 
the  wages  range  in  the  country  villages  from  four 
to  seven  dollars  a  month  and  table  board.  The 
cooks  and  housemaids  greatly  prefer  to  live  in 


CONSUMES   MORE    THAN    HE    EARNS  29 

their  own  rented  cabin  off  to  themselves,  and  oc 
casionally  they  own  the  cabin.  As  they  generally 
refuse  to  do  any  work  outside  of  the  kitchen  and 
dining-room,  with  a  small  family  they  have  sev 
eral  hours  in  the  forenoon  and  nearly  all  the  after 
noon  to  themselves.  A  brisk  white  cook  in  a 
Northern  city  performs  fully  five  times  the  labor 
that  one  of  these  dusky  ones  does  in  the  South. 
The  cook  knows  that  if  she  is  turned  off  she  can 
get  another  job  in  twenty- four  hours,  and  if  a  little 
extra  work  is  put  on  her,  she  will  quit  and  try  an 
other  place.  A  majority  of  the  white  women  in 
the  South  do  their  own  work,  even  many  of  the 
wealthy  women,  but  there  are  numbers  of  delicate 
or  invalid  women  unequal  to  the  task,  and  this 
keeps  up  the  demand  for  house  servants. 

A  little  farther  north,  in  Tennessee  and  Ken 
tucky,  where  there  are  not  so  many  negroes,  very 
few  ladies  have  house  servants  of  any  kind.  Some 
of  our  nicest  ladies  refuse  to  employ  colored  house 
servants  at  all  because  they  can  not  train  them 
away  from  filth — can  not  train  them  to  be  decent. 
Twenty  years  ago  there  were  quite  a  number  of 
old  well-trained  house  servants,  well  qualified  in 
decency  and  gentility,  but  this  class  is  now  very 
small  and  its  members  have  few  successors. 

During  the  cotton  hoeing  season  in  the  spring, 
and  the  cotton  picking  season,  many  of  the  house 


30  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

servants  go  to  the  field  for  better  wages,  and  be 
cause  they  like  the  work  better,  and  this  adds  to 
their  inefficiency  in  the  house.  The  chief  reason, 
however,  why  the  domestic  servants  get  so  little 
training  is  this :  they  change  so  often  and  are  occa 
sionally  employed  by  women  who  themselves  are 
untidy  housekeepers ;  and  then,  no  woman  cares  to 
train  a  servant  when  she  expects  that  servant  to 
leave  in  a  few  months.  The  housekeepers  say  it 
does  not  pay  to  train  their  domestics  for  some 
other  housekeeper's  benefit.  The  domestic  serv 
ants  are  awkward  and  bungling  in  their  work,  un 
tidy,  often  filthy,  have  no  management,  are  waste 
ful,  and  have  little  care  to  please  their  employers. 
We  come  now  to  what  every  one  of  these  col 
ored  cooks  is  an  adept  in.  She  understands  re 
markably  well  how  to  feed  several  other  negroes 
from  her  employer's  table.  No  matter  how  care 
fully  the  mistress  of  the  house  carries  the  keys,  the 
cook  will  feed  her  husband,  or  children,  or  neigh 
bors.  It  seems  to  be  a  part  of  her  social  duty; 
she  carries  off  everything  from  the  table  that  is 
not  locked  up.  When  much  care  is  taken  to  put 
away  the  leavings,  the  table  will  become  a  little 
scarce  in  provisions,  the  coffee  weak,  and  there  will 
be  barely  enough  to  go  round.  But  the  employers 
are  usually  very  liberal  in  allowing  all  the  leavings 
to  disappear,  and  after  every  meal  the  cook  will 


CONSUMES   MORE   THAN    HE    EARNS  31 

be  seen  going  off  with  a  large  pan  or  basket  cov 
ered  with  a  napkin. 

Some  house  servants  are  addicted  to  enriching, 
by  slow  degrees,  their  own  tableware  from  their 
employer's,  but  this  is  not  very  common,  and  still 
less  common  is  the  habit  of  stealing  other  valu 
ables  from  the  house,  such  as  jewelry,  clothing, 
and  so  on.  In  fact,  I  will  say  such  theft  is  rare. 

After  all,  there  is  a  clever  feeling  usually  be 
tween  the  housewife  and  her  servants  with  all 
their  faults.  No  other  class  of  delinquents  in  the 
world  is  looked  on  with  so  much  kind  indulgence 
as  these  colored  domestics. 

But  we  must  face  the  facts,  and  the  fact  is  that 
in  another  twenty  years  colored  domestics  will  be 
scarce  and  as  worthless  as  scarce. 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE  IMPROVIDENCE  OF  THE  NEGRO 

IF  the  negro  makes  more  than  his  rents  and 
expenses,  he  wastes  it.  The  race,  with  few  excep 
tions,  knows  nothing  of  saving.  "  Money  burns 
in  his  pocket."  Many  of  them,  that  do  work 
enough  to  support  them  well,  are  often  in  want 
and  have  nothing  ahead.  They  waste  time  in  the 
winter  and  spring,  and  get  a  late  start  with  their 
crop.  Hirelings  rarely  set  in  before  time  for 
spring  work,  then  they  look  about  for  "  crop 
job."  Before  the  war,  the  landlord  arranged  his 
plans  for  crops  several  years  ahead:  now  it  is  dif 
ficult  to  forecast  the  ensuing  crop  till  one  secures 
laborers  in  the  spring  when  the  crop  ought  to  be 
already  well  started.  Those  that  rent  land  and 
those  that  crop  on  shares  usually  do  a  little  better. 
The  planter  rarely  knows  what  lands  he  will  rent 
to  croppers,  what  he  will  let  out  on  shares  till 
after  New  Year,  and  he  must  wait  longer  to  see 
what  he  will  work  with  hired  labor.  These  three 
plans  are  intermingled,  and  having  to  arrange  for 
them  every  year  makes  farming  an  unsatisfactory 

32 


IMPROVIDENCE  OF  THE  NEGRO  33 

business.  All  these  hands  are  to  be  supplied.  The 
renters  usually  have  their  stock,  a  wagon  and  some 
implements,  but  the  croppers  are  supplied  with 
these  by  the  landlord.  Mortgages  follow,  and  on 
a  large  plantation  the  merchant  or  planter,  some 
times  both  of  them,  loses  on  some  of  these  con 
tracts. 

In  crop  gathering  time  many  of  them  waste 
much  good  weather,  allowing  the  late  rains  and 
frosts  of  winter  to  damage  their  crops  materially. 
The  system,  however,  is  becoming  constantly  more 
rigid.  During  crop  season  the  large  supply  mer 
chants  employ  riders  to  visit  all  the  parties  whom 
they  supply  and  to  push  up  the  laborers,  who 
stand  in  awe  of  these  riders  lest  their  supplies 
may  be  cut  off.  The  large  planters  employ  bosses 
to  see  after  their  crops.  In  the  rich  delta  lands 
these  bosses  command  the  negroes  almost  as  well 
as  in  the  days  of  slavery.  It  is  singular  how  one 
white  man  can  command  so  well  fifty  or  a  hundred 
negroes.  If  a  negro  gives  a  boss  impudence  he  is 
likely  to  be  knocked  down,  and  other  negroes,  see 
ing  it,  are  all  silent,  but  rather  enjoy  it  and  side 
with  the  white  man. 

But  in  the  upland  sections  where  there  are  few 
negroes  they  are  less  manageable.  From  laying 
by  time  till  gathering  time,  and  from  the  time 
one  crop  is  gathered  till  another  is  commenced, 


34  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

the  supplies  are  cut  off,  so  if  the  hands  need  any 
thing  they  have  to  do  job  work  for  it.  This 
forces  many  of  them  to  work  when  otherwise  they 
would  be  idle. 

Thrifty  farmers  can  find  work  the  year  round, 
and  this  is  one  difference  in  farming  where  the 
work  is  done  by  white  men  and  where  it  is  done 
by  negroes.  This  again  accounts  for  the  differ 
ence  in  the  price  of  the  Yazoo  Delta  lands  and  the 
Illinois  rich  prairie  lands.  Fifty  dollars  per  acre 
is  a  good  price  for  the  former,  while  the  latter 
sell  for  $100  to  $200  per  acre.  I  know  of  no 
cause  for  this  but  the  difference  in  the  quality  of 
the  labor.  Then  we  must  recur  to  the  ques 
tion  asked  in  a  former  chapter,  "  Does  the  negro 
make  his  living  and  pay  half  rents  for  his 
land?" 

The  negro  takes  poor  care  of  his  belongings. 
He  leaves  his  plows  in  the  weather  to  rust  all 
winter  and  treats  his  other  implements  the  same 
way.  When  he  wants  a  hoe  or  rake  he  sometimes 
has  to  go  to  the  back  of  the  field  after  it.  His 
implements  are  always  scattered.  He  has  no 
wagon  shelter  or  house  for  his  tools,  has  poor 
barns  and  poorer  stables,  and  no  sheds  for  his  cat 
tle.  All  this  causes  much  loss  of  time,  a  rapid 
wearing  of  his  tools,  and  a  costly  wintering  of 


IMPROVIDENCE  OF  THE  NEGRO  35 

stock,  for  stock  not  warmly  housed,  require  more 
food  to  keep  them  in  order.  Negroes  are  noto 
riously  bad  stock  masters.  In  plowing,  his  gear 
is  often  illy  adjusted  to  its  work,  galling  the  mules' 
shoulders,  making  the  plow  run  badly,  too  deep  or 
too  shallow.  He  is  slow  to  see  anything  wrong 
with  the  gear,  or  any  tool  he  uses.  If  he  has  a 
rickety  door  or  gate  that  might  be  remedied  in  a 
few  minutes,  he  will  continue  to  pass  through  it, 
though  it  is  troublesome  to  open,  and  never  think 
of  fixing  it.  Poor  stock  and  poor  dogs  are  char 
acteristic  of  a  negro's  premises.  The  negro's  gen 
eral  bad  management  and  unmethodical  ways 
cause  much  loss  to  his  profits. 

Negro  improvidence  is  shown  in  the  following 
bit  of  conversation.  I  was  in  a  jeweler's  store 
when  a  good-looking  young  negro  man  came  in 
and  asked  the  jeweler  to  examine  his  watch.  I 
said  to  him:  "Why,  have  you  got  a  watch?" 
"Yes,  sir,"  he  replied,  seeming  much  pleased,. 
"  You  must  be  prosperous.  Have  any  money  in 
the  bank?"  "  No,  sir."  "Have  a  home  and 
land?"  "No,  sir."  "Have  you  a  mule  or 
wagon?"  "No,  sir."  "Have  an  axe  or  hoe  or 
any  implement?  "  "  No,  sir."  "  Have  a  wife?  " 
"  Yes,  sir."  "  Is  a  wife  and  a  watch  all  you 
own?"  "Yes,  sir."  By  this  time  his  pleased 


36  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

looks  had  fallen,  and  he  went  out.  This  was  an 
actual  conversation  and  represents  well  the  char 
acter  of  the  negro's  improvidence.  There  is  noth 
ing  mean  or  vicious  in  such  habits,  and  all  negroes 
are  not  so  lacking  in  financial  ability. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  HISTORIC  NEGRO 

I  ONCE  met  a  very  intelligent  gentleman  from 
Montana,  who  told  me  that  there  is  no  such  per 
sonage  as  the  historic  Indian;  that  those  who  are 
acquainted  with  the  Indian  only  through  books, 
have  but  little  knowledge  of  his  real  character. 
After  discussing  the  matter  with  him,  I  remarked 
that  his  statement  about  the  Indian  would  apply 
equally  well  to  the  negroes  of  the  South.  He 
said  he  thought  so  too,  but  having  only  slight  ac 
quaintance  with  the  negroes,  he  could  not  speak 
positively. 

Most  people  living  in  the  South  understand  tol 
erably  well  the  characteristics  of  the  colored  race, 
but  the  farmers  who  employ  them  understand  them 
better  than  others  do.  People  living  outside  of 
the  old  slave  States  understand  but  faintly  the 
real  character  of  this  greatly  misrepresented  race. 
Even  the  ministers,  in  their  zeal  for  good  works, 
not  coming  in  contact  with  the  negroes  on  the 
exposed  side  of  their  characters,  fail  to  understand 
their  nature,  over-estimate  their  capacity,  mistake 

37 


38  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

their  book  learning  for  progress,  and  their  zeal  in 
church  work  for  true  religion,  and  they  give  a 
hurrah  statement  to  the  world  about  an  encour 
aging  development,  a  development  that  has  not 
been  made. 

At  steady,  hard  labor,  such  as  chopping,  split 
ting  rails,  ditching,  the  negro  is  fully  the  white 
man's  equal,  if  not  his  superior:  he  can  do  as 
much  work  in  a  day,  can  work  as  many  days  in 
a  year,  and  as  many  years  in  a  life  time.  But  he 
must  not  be  pushed.  At  work  that  requires  quick 
ness  of  action  and  rapidity  of  movement,  he  falls 
behind  the  white  man.  In  severe  army  life,  where 
running,  wading,  swimming,  starving,  feasting, 
doing  without  sleep,  resting,  working,  and  freez 
ing  are  all  mingled  together  in  the  most  irregular 
order  and  quantity,  the  negro  goes  down  rapidly 
and  finds  an  early  grave.  One  white  man  can  last 
as  long  as  three  negroes,  at  least. 

The  negro  left  to  himself,  separated  from  other 
workers,  is  a  poor  laborer,  both  as  to  work  and 
as  to  how  to  work,  whether  he  is  hireling,  renter, 
or  cropper.  There  are  a  few,  of  course,  who  do 
well,  but  negroes  work  best  in  squads  under  a  boss, 
and  they  are  attracted  to  this  kind  of  work.  A  sec 
tion  boss  on  a  railroad  can  command  them  well, 
govern  them  easily  and  get  much  work  out  of 
them.  In  sawmills  and  all  factories  where  colored 


THE    HISTORIC    NEGRO  39 

labor  is  employed,  they  are  obedient,  manageable, 
and  work  well. 

The  negro  needs  a  boss.  In  all  his  years  of 
slavery  he  worked  under  a  boss  and  looked  up  to 
him.  In  his  African  life  he  did  no  regular  work 
of  any  kind.  He  still  looks  to  some  one  to  advise, 
direct  him  and  to  tell  him  to  go.  He  likes  a  man 
of  authority.  A  man  with  a  large  supply  store,  or 
the  owner  of  a  large  plantation,  is  about  his  high 
est  ideal  of  a  great  man.  Such  men  as  these,  un 
derstanding  the  nature  of  the  negro,  can  control 
negroes  at  will.  They  like  him,  look  up  to  him, 
and  feel  that  he  has  the  right  to  boss  them  al 
most  as  they  did  in  the  days  of  slavery.  They 
fear  him,  admire  him,  and  look  to  him  for  help  in 
all  times  of  trouble.  If  he  knocks  one  of  them 
down  for  impudence,  the  others  are  all  on  the 
boss's  side  and  tease  the  one  knocked  down  for 
having  no  more  sense  than  to  affront  that  white 
man. 

They  respect  the  whole  white  race  and  feel  that 
they  can  not  hope  to  cope  with  the  whites.  There 
are  two  classes  of  whites  a  negro  has  a  profound 
contempt  for:  the  really  low  grade,  log  cabin 
"  poor  folks  " — not  "  poor  white  trash  "  ;  that 
phrase  was  put  into  the  negro's  mouth  by  writers 
— and  white  people  who  equalize  themselves  with 
negroes.  If  a  man  treats  a  negro  as  a  white  man, 


40  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

the  negro  will  treat  him  as  a  negro,  and  will  have 
a  contempt  for  him. 

In  the  Yazoo  Delta,  where  there  are  five  to 
twenty  negroes  to  one  white  person,  the  colored 
race  is  most  peaceable  and  best  behaved.  On 
large  plantations,  where  the -owners  employ  intel 
ligent  practical  men  as  bosses,  the  negroes  do  best. 
The  boss  is  generally  kind  and  positive  and  allows 
no  impudence,  and  if  he  understands  the  negro 
nature,  they  like  him,  honor  him,  and  obey  him, 
and  he  wields  unbounded  influence  over  them. 
But  of  course  there  is  occasionally  found  a  bad 
negro  among  them. 

In  the  days  of  slavery,  the  negro  looked  up  to 
his  master  with  the  reverential  respect  with  which 
a  subject  looks  up  to  his  king.  He  felt  great  fear 
of  him  and  half  worshiped  him.  He  had  an  im 
plied  ownership  in  everything  on  the  place,  and 
always  said  "  our  horses,"  "  our  cattle,"  "  our 
land,"  "  our  crop,"  "  our  black  folks,"  "  our  white 
folks,"  and  so  on  about  everything  on  the  place. 
He  prided  in  "  our  things "  being  better  than 
those  of  his  neighbors.  "  Ole  miss  "  stood  above 
everything  else,  next  to  "  ole  master."  They  all 
had  a  respectful  fear  of  these  two  personages; 
and  looked  to  them  for  protection  in  everything — 
even  in  times  of  storms,  or  lightnings,  or  Indian 
invasions.  A  regiment  of  them,  well  drilled  and 


THE    HISTORIC   NEGRO  4! 

under  uole  master's  "  command,  would  have  been 
a  dangerous  foe,  and  could  have  been  led  to 
charge  the  most  formidable  odds.  Under  a  com 
mander  of  their  own  race,  they  could  have  been 
easily  panicked.  A  charge  of  fifty  Indians  would 
have  routed  a  thousand  of  them. 

To  this  day  one  will  scarcely  find  an  old  negro 
who  does  not  quote  his  old  master  as  one  of  the 
highest  authority  and  he  always  speaks  of  him 
with  great  respect.  They  even  boast  of  what  good 
and  happy  times  they  had  in  the  days  of  slavery; 
still,  rarely  is  one  found  who  would  like  to  be  a 
slave  under  the  same  conditions  he  once  served. 
The  fable  of  the  well-fattened  dog  and  the  hungry 
wolf  illustrates  the  case.  The  dog  asked  the  wolf 
to  go  and  live  with  him  and  have  plenty.  The 
wolf  spied  the  hair  worn  off  the  dog's  neck,  and 
asked,  "Why  that?"  The  dog  replied,  "Oh, 
that  is  nothing.  They  put  a  collar  on  me  in  the 
daytime  that  I  may  be  fiercer  at  night."  "  Good 
bye,"  said  the  wolf,  "  I  would  rather  be  a  hungry 
wolf  than  a  fat  slave." 

The  old  plantation  negro  loved  his  "white 
folks"  and  all  on  the  place  as  a  man  loves  his 
country,  and  looked  up  to  "  ole  "  master  as  a  man 
looks  up  to  his  king  and  the  royal  family,  whether 
good  or  bad.  About  his  highest  idea  of  an  inde 
pendent  government  was  one  of  these  knights  of 


42  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

a  big  plantation.  If  there  was  a  young  lady  in 
the  family  every  negro  on  the  place  was  delighted 
at  her  smiles  and  well-nigh  worshiped  her  as  their 
model  and  their  queen.  All  the  colored  maids 
about  the  house  tried  to  be  like  her,  to  walk  like 
and  talk  like  her.  If  she  was  fractious  and  ill 
tempered,  it  was  her  right;  if  she  was  kind  and 
good  to  them,  she  was  their  good  angel. 

The  white  boys  and  the  colored  boys  usually 
played  together  and  fought  together,  but  by  the 
time  they  were  twelve  to  thirteen,  the  colored  boy 
began  to  look  to  his  white  playmate  as  in  some 
way  heir  to  the  kingdom.  He  would  then  fight 
for  him  more  readily  than  he  would  for  one  of 
his  own  color.  I  remember  when  I  was  a  small 
boy  my  older  brother  had  a  colored  playmate  of 
his  size  and  age,  but  a  little  stouter  and  more 
active.  My  brother,  then  twelve  years  old,  con 
cluded  he  wanted  to  whip  a  certain  negro  in  the 
neighborhood  about  his  own  age  and  size.  We 
met  him  one  day  when  our  negro  was  present. 
My  brother  and  this  neighbor  negro  had  the  fight, 
a  long  and  hard  one,  the  negro  getting  a  little  the 
best  of  it.  Finally  seeing  the  negro  was  too 
much  for  him,  my  brother  called  his  colored  play 
mate  to  take  up  the  fight  for  him.  So  my  brother 
stood  aside,  and  his  colored  playmate  took  up 
the  fight.  After  a  long,  hard  struggle,  with  oc- 


THE    HISTORIC    NEGRO  43 

casional  blowing  spells  interjected,  neither  one 
getting  much  the  better  of  the  other,  my  brother 
told  them  to  quit,  and  they  both  were  willing. 
During  the  fight  my  brother  forbid  any  help  to 
be  given  during  his  part  of  it,  and  he  would  not 
allow  any  to  be  given  his  colored  playmate.  None 
of  this  was  told  at  the  home  of  either  party — ex 
cept  among  the  boys — for  each  side,  of  course, 
claimed  the  victory.  Every  negro  boy  would 
fight  at  any  time  for  any  white  boy  on  his  place. 
I  always  felt  as  safe  among  the  negroes  on  our 
place  as  I  did  with  my  larger  brothers.  In  fact, 
I  felt  that  I  would  be  well  cared  for  among 
any  of  our  neighbors'  negroes. 

This  safety  of  white  children  among  negroes 
seemed  almost  without  exception.  They  were 
kind  and  attentive  to  white  children  on  all  oc 
casions,  and  certainly  too  much  so  to  be  accounted 
for  by  fear.  A  small  boy  would  sometimes  get 
into  a  fight  with  the  negro  boy,  but  the  larger 
negroes  would  not  let  them  hurt  one  another. 

One  or  more  white  women  were  often  left  at 
home  during  the  day  with  a  feeling  of  perfect 
safety,  if  only  the  cook  or  house-maid  were  pres 
ent.  This  faithfulness  of  the  negroes  continued 
during  the  war.  The  women  and  children  of  the 
South  were  left  to  a  great  extent  to  the  protection 
and  support  of  the  negroes,  who  proved  faithful 


44  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

beyond  all  expectation  of  the  world  and  even  be 
yond  the  expectation  of  their  owners. 

They  were  trusty  in  hiding  stock  and  all  val 
uables  from  the  invaders.  It  is  true  that  many 
of  them,  enticed  by  the  idea  of  freedom,  went  to 
the  Federal  army.  But  it  is  a  singular  proof  of 
their  faithfulness  that  so  few  of  them  rode  off 
their  master's  horse  and  saddle,  or  carried  any 
thing  of  value  with  them.  Still  more  remark 
able  is  it  that  these  runaways  never  led  the 
Yankees  back  to  their  old  master's  home,  or  to 
any  of  their  neighbors,  or  gave  any  information 
concerning  the  property  or  politics  of  their  old 
neighbors.  It  is  strange  that  they  did  not  tell 
harrowing  tales  of  bad  treatment  and  want  the 
Yankees  to  hang  their  old  masters.  But  if  any 
runaway  negro  ever  did,  I  have  never  heard  of  it, 
not  even  where  the  negroes  had  had  hard  masters. 

In  this  respect  they  show  a  fine  contrast  when 
placed  beside  Southern  Union  men,  many  of 
whom  deemed  it  the  special  business  for  which 
they  were  born  to  report  the  sayings  and  prop 
erty  of  their  neighbors  and  their  political  activity 
to  the  Federal  officers,  and  induce  them  to  send 
out  squads  of  soldiers  to  pillage  and  burn  out 
certain  rebellious  parties.  I  never  heard  of  ne 
groes  doing  any  mischief  of  such  character.  I 
will  say,  however,  that  all  Union  men  were  not 


THE    HISTORIC   NEGRO  45 

so  bad,  and  that  many  were  a  protection  to  their 
neighbors  of  the  Southern  cause. 

The  Southern  people  have  ever  acknowledged 
the  faithfulness  of  the  negroes  during  the  war, 
have  ever  appreciated  it,  and  still  bear  to  the 
negroes  a  grateful  remembrance  for  it. 

This  faithfulness  of  the  negroes  to  their  "  white 
folks  "  is  indubitable  evidence  of  the  kindly  feel 
ing  existing  between  the  two  races  in  those  days. 
It  puts  to  silence  the  charges  often  made  by  the 
abolitionists  of  the  intolerable  sufferings  of  the 
slaves,  and  establishes  the  fact  of  the  slaves'  good 
treatment  and  of  their  contentment.  For  they 
still  served  as  slaves  when  no  one  was  present 
to  make  them  afraid,  and,  when  on  the  other 
hand,  they  were  in  the  presence  of  an  army  of 
fering  them  freedom.  The  world's  history  has 
nothing  equal  to  it.  Dr.  B.  F.  Ward,  of  our 
State,  in  one  of  his  logical  essays,  says  a  monu 
ment  ought  to  be  erected  to  their  memory  by  the 
Southern  people.  And  so  it  ought. 


CHAPTER   VI 

CHANGES     WROUGHT     IN     THE     NEGRO     BY     HIS 
FREEDOM 

THE  negro's  greatest  failure,  perhaps,  lies  in 
his  failure  to  raise  his  children  to  be  as  good  as 
himself.  Even  the  best  and  most  sensible  of  them 
rarely  exhibit  any  tact  in  molding  the  character  of 
their  children.  They  seem  to  think  they  perform 
their  whole  duty  when  they  clothe  and  feed  their 
children  and  send  them  to  school.  They  rarely 
whip  except  to  gratify  their  anger,  and  never 
praise  or  censure  good  and  bad  conduct  in  their 
children.  They  scold  because  they  are  fretted 
and  not  to  improve  the  child's  character. 

Truly  one  of  the  negroes'  most  serious  losses  in 
the  changed  condition  is  in  no  longer  having  their 
children  partly  raised  by  the  white  people.  In 
slavery  days  sick  negro  children  were  well  cared 
for.  They  were  often  seen  on  a  pallet  by  the 
chimney  corner  in  the  housewife's  own  room, 
properly  fed  and  administered  to  and  they  had 
the  service  of  a  doctor  if  such  services  were 
needed.  When  not  sick  they  played  with  the  white 

46 


CHANGES    WROUGHT   IN   THE    NEGRO         47 

children,  absorbed  much  from  them,  and  while 
performing  such  work  about  the  house  and  yard 
as  they  were  capable  of,  the  mistress  instructed 
them  in  morals  and  becoming  conduct.  The 
master's  counsel  and  thoughts  also  continued 
to  be  poured  into  the  minds  of  all  his  negroes, 
and  that  with  good  effect,  for  they  looked  up  to 
him  as  a  man  of  wisdom  and  authority.  In  this 
way  the  negroes  were  generally  well  trained. 

Fewer  negro  children  are  born  now  than  before 
the  war,  and  a  much  smaller  per  cent,  of  those 
born  are  raised,  and  those  raised  lack  the  training 
those  had  who  were  raised  in  slavery.  The  mas 
ter  has  almost  ceased  to  live  on  his  plantation. 
There  is  now  no  inducement  for  him  to  live  there 
to  see  after  the  sanitary  condition,  and  the  raising 
of  his  negroes,  for  they  are  not  his;  so  he  rents 
out  his  land,  or  crops  it  on  shares  and  lives  in 
town.  The  two  races  are  continually  coming  less 
and  less  in  contact,  and  this  is  to  the  disadvantage 
of  the  negro. 

I  must  commend  the  negroes  for  one  thing; 
they  treat  step-children  about  as  well  as  they  do 
their  own.  It  is  easier  for  an  orphan  child  to  find 
a  home  among  them  than  for  a  white  orphan  to 
find  a  home  with  its  own  race.  As  badly  as  ne 
groes  raise  children,  they  all  seem  to  want  them. 
Their  women  are  far  more  barren  now  than  be- 


48  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

fore  the  war.  A  barren  wife,  the  doctors  tell  me, 
often  consults  a  physician,  that  he  may  remove 
her  barrenness.  This  is  the  very  reverse  of  what 
white  women  often  do,  who  consult  physicians  as 
to  how  to  prevent  the  multiplication  of  respon 
sibilities.  The  negroes  give  poor  attention  to  the 
comforts  of  the  aged,  are  poor  hands  to  sit  up 
with  the  sick  and  give  medicine,  but  prompt  to 
sit  up  with  the  dead  and  to  attend  funerals.  Be 
it  said  to  their  credit,  however,  when  any  one  of 
their  number  becomes  an  invalid,  man,  woman,  or 
child,  that  one  can  find  a  home  somewhere,  even 
where  the  sick  one  has  no  kinsfolk.  Their  want 
of  attention  to  the  sick  and  aged  is  not  from  any 
selfishness  or  meanness,  but  from  their  careless 
habits  in  all  their  ways.  They  take  care  of  their 
farms  and  their  stock  in  the  same  way.  They 
have  the  goodness  of  heart  to  feed  the  hungry 
and  to  support  the  invalid  or  the  orphan. 

Where  the  negroes  greatly  outnumber  the 
whites  they  seem  to  be  less  prolific  than  where 
there  are  few.  In  slavery  they  were  the  most 
prolific  race  ever  known.  Infertility  seems  to  be 
greatly  on  the  increase  among  them.  I  will  give 
one  instance  in  this  county: 

Esquire  Gatlin  tells  me  that  on  his  and  his  part 
ner's  places  in  the  delta  lands,  they  have  thirty- 
five  families;  some  are  occasionally  moving  out 


CHANGES   WROUGHT   IN   THE    NEGRO         49 

and  others  moving  in,  but  the  number  is  kept 
full.  He  states,  "  Within  the  past  sixteen  years 
only  nine  births  have  occurred  on  these  thirty- 
five  settlements"  (1906).  This,  however,  I 
think,  must  be  an  unusual  case  even  for  the  delta 
negroes,  though  the  long  time  and  the  large  num 
ber  of  families  look  quite  significant.  Something 
akin  to  this  must  take  place  in  the  crowded  negro 
parts  of  cities. 

About  fifteen  years  ago  I  wrote  to  a  great  many 
physicians  and  asked  them  the  history  of  tuber 
culosis  among  the  colored  people.  The  consen 
sus  of  opinion  was  uniform.  Before  the  war 
consumption  was  scarcely  known  among  the  ne 
groes,  now  (1895)  it  is  quite  common  among 
them,  greatly  on  the  increase,  and  the  time  from 
attack  to  death  is  shortening.  I  will  add  at  this 
date,  consumption  seems  on  the  accelerated  in 
crease.  It  is  increasing  so  rapidly  that  some 
think  this  will  be  the  final  solution  of  the  race 
problem. 

With  regard  to  similar  questions  concerning 
venereal  diseases,  the  conclusions  were  that  a 
majority  of  the  negroes  are  at  all  times  afflicted, 
some  being  cured  and  some  becoming  afflicted,  and 
some  diseased  all  the  time,  and  that  negroes  do 
not  suffer  from  these  diseases  as  the  white  people 
do.  If  they  did,  it  would  soon  end  the  race. 


50  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

Some  negroes  are  almost  immune  from  any 
venereal  afflictions.  Some  of  the  doctors  were  of 
opinion  that  these  diseases,  by  weakening  the  con 
stitution,  reduced  the  system  so  that  it  is  an  easy 
victim  to  tuberculosis  and  scrofula.  In  slavery 
times  the  doctors  attested  that  the  race  suffered 
but  little  from  excessive  venery.  The  doctors 
now  tell  me  it  is  not  on  the  increase,  for  the  rea 
son  that  the  limit  of  excess  has  been  reached,  and 
some  think  this  is  the  cause  of  increasing  infer 
tility  of  the  race.  I  am  decidedly  of  opinion  that 
it  is  the  chief  cause. 

My  remarks  must  be  understood  in  this  work 
to  refer,  when  not  otherwise  stated,  to  the  true 
negro  and  not  to  the  mulatto.  The  mulatto  is 
more  subject  to  the  diseases  mentioned  than  the 
negro  is,  and  he  has  less  hope  of  recovery. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  great  war  at  present 
being  waged  against  tuberculosis  will  prove  bene 
ficial  to  the  colored  race;  but  nothing  can  be  done 
to  check  excessive  venery  of  the  race. 


CHAPTER   VII 

WANT  OF  INVENTIVE  POWERS  AND  MECHANICAL 
SKILL  THE    CROWDING-OUT    PROCESS 

THE  Southern  landlord  is  slow  to  introduce  im 
proved  methods  and  useful  machinery  on  account 
of  the  character  of  the  labor  he  uses.  He  knows 
the  difficulty  of  changing  the  habits  of  the  negro 
in  farming,  and  his  want  of  skill  in  handling  ma 
chinery.  The  negro  is  a  creature  of  habit  and 
imitation.  When  his  habits  are  changed  he  has 
to  learn  all  over  again.  I  will  narrate  one  in 
stance  which  well  illustrates  why  men  farming  with 
negro  labor  are  slow  to  introduce  machinery. 

Some  years  ago  I  was  on  Farmer  Capell's  large 
plantation  during  harvest  gathering. 

"  Mr.  Capell,"  I  said,  "  reapers  are  a  great 
invention  for  saving  wheat,  are  they  not?"  "I 
don't  know,"  replied  he.  "  I  think  I  used  to  do 
as  well  with  the  cradles  as  I  now  do  with  the 
reapers.  A  negro  can  handle  a  cradle  better  than 
he  can  a  reaper." 

Some  days  later  I  met  Mr.  Johnston,  of  Ripley, 
Tennessee,  a  neighbor  to  Mr.  Capell,  and  asked 

51 


52  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

him  the  same  question.  Mr.  Johnston  replied: 
u  Why,  a  reaper  is  a  wonderful  improvement  on 
the  cradle."  I  said,  "  Mr.  Capell  thinks  the 
reaper  no  better  than  the  cradle."  "  Oh,  I  know 
what  is  the  matter  with  Capell,"  said  he;  "  Capell 
puts  a  negro  to  drive  his  reaper,  and  about  every 
other  round  he  runs  it  against  a  stump  or  manages 
in  some  way  to  break  something,  and  then  takes 
hours  or  a  day  to  go  to  the  blacksmith  and  return, 
and  so  the  loss  of  time  balances  the  advantage  of 
the  reaper.  No  one  ever  drives  mine  but  myself. 
I  have  had  it  three  years  and  it  has  not  yet  formed 
the  acquaintance  of  the  blacksmith."  I  have 
given  almost  the  exact  words  of  the  two  men. 

Some  negroes,  however,  have  good  mechanical 
skill,  but  the  harvester  can  not  depend  on  getting 
them  when  needed. 

The  negro  has  no  invention,  but  he  can  be 
trained  to  do  good  mechanical  work,  and  after 
being  trained  he  must  ever  afterwards  work  ex 
actly  according  to  his  training.  When  he  learns 
to  make  an  axe  handle,  his  process  in  making  one 
never  changes,  and  all  his  axe  handles  are  just 
alike.  He  can  be  taught  to  manage  a  piece  of 
machinery  by  showing  and  explaining  the  ma 
chine  itself;  but  from  drawings  and  explanations, 
without  the  machine,  he  learns  nothing.  In  fact 
he  is  a  grievous  failure  in  understanding  instruc- 


WANT   OF  MECHANICAL    SKILL  53 

tions  of  any  kind.  With  the  best  of  intentions  he 
often  does  what  he  was  cautioned  not  to  do. 

He  is  a  great  imitator  and  a  poor  mimic,  and 
when  he  sees  some  one  else  do  a  piece  of  work  he 
is  quick  to  "  catch  on  "  and  to  perform  a  like  job 
himself  in  the  same  way.  Then,  left  to  himself, 
he  rarely  makes  any  improvements,  but  soon  be 
comes  expert  in  that  one  way. 

With  proper  instruction  in  doing,  negroes  make 
good  journey  workmen  as  carpenters,  but  never 
rise  to  the  dignity  of  architects  or  even  contract 
ors  on  a  large  scale.  They,  perhaps,  succeed  bet 
ter  as  brickmasons  than  in  any  other  trade,  and 
they  make  fine  barbers  and  good  blacksmiths. 
They  work  single  pieces  of  machinery  well,  but 
when  it  comes  to  running  complicated  machinery 
on  the  ground,  such  as  reapers,  mowers,  gang 
plows,  and  so  on,  where  the  machine  has  to  be 
adjusted  to  varied  and  changing  conditions,  the 
height  and  quantity  of  grass,  the  character  of  the 
ground,  and  the  strength  of  the  machinery,  few 
colored  men  can  be  found  equal  to  the  task.  If 
the  machine  is  running  heavily  or  is  out  of  order 
in  some  way,  they  never  know  it  till  something 
breaks.  In  hot  weather  they  often  drive  a  horse 
beyond  his  power  of  endurance  before  they  are 
aware  of  it.  They  are  slow  to  observe,  as  a  rule, 
and  slow  to  profit  by  their  observations. 


54  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

The  same  habits  they  have  in  managing  ma 
chinery  applies  to  their  care  of  stock.  Most  ne 
groes  have  poor  stock,  even  when  they  have  plenty 
of  provender.  The  planter  who  employs  colored 
labor  has  to  look  after  his  stock  constantly,  not 
risking  a  single  feed  without  seeing  it  done.  A 
good  cow  is  about  the  cheapest  and  best  method 
of  securing  table  luxuries,  but  it  is  a  costly  way 
if  trusted  to  a  milk-maid;  for  she  will  not  get 
cream  enough  to  churn,  and  will  soon  milk  the 
cow  dry.  With  abundance  of  convenient  food 
she  will  let  the  cow  get  poor.  I  have  quit  keeping 
cows  in  disgust  at  the  impossibility  of  getting 
them  well  attended  to  without  doing  it  myself. 

There  was  a  time  before  the  sixties  and  for 
some  time  after,  when  a  white  barber  could 
scarcely  be  found  in  our  Southern  cities  and  vil 
lages;  now  scarcely  a  colored  one  can  be  found. 
This,  I  judge,  is  more  from  bad  management 
than  from  bad  barbering.  I  found  many  colored 
barbers  in  Washington,  but  all  I  saw  were  mulat 
tos  or  quadroons.  Possibly  race  prejudice  may 
also  have  had  something  to  do  in  crowding  out 
the  barbers.  I  once  asked  a  prominent  lawyer  in 
Memphis  which  he  preferred  before  the  war,  a 
white  barber  or  a  colored  one?  He  replied 
promptly,  "  A  colored  one."  "  Which  do  you 
prefer  now?"  I  said.  "A  white  one,"  he  re- 


WANT   OF  MECHANICAL   SKILL  55 

plied,  "  but  I  don't  know  why."  This  must  be 
a  sort  of  unconscious  race  preference.  All  I 
know  is  the  fact  that  the  men  who  formerly  pre 
ferred  the  colored  barber,  now  prefer  the  white. 

At  the  close  of  the  war  the  negroes  practically 
had  the  blacksmith  trade  in  their  own  hands. 
They  are  now  nearly  all  crowded  out.  I  judge 
this  resulted  from  the  negro  smiths  having  in 
ferior  appointments, — being  often  out  of  iron  and 
suitable  material,  want  of  good  management,  and 
workmanship  inferior  usually  to  that  of  a  neigh 
boring  white  smith. 

The  negroes  do  better  in  carpentering,  for  in 
this  they  can  work  as  journey  workers.  They 
fail  in  the  trades  where  they  have  to  run  the  busi 
ness  themselves.  The  only  trade  in  which  they 
hold  what  they  had  in  1865  is  bricklaying.  They 
are  slowly  disappearing  as  hotel  servants,  and 
they  seem  in  a  process  of  being  crowded  out  of 
all  the  easier  and  better  paying  labors.  They 
are  increasing  as  mail  carriers  because  white  men 
refuse  to  work  with  them  on  an  equality.  Here 
again  we  find  the  mulattos  in  the  majority.  One 
sees  but  few  full-blood  negroes  in  the  mail  service. 

In  1865  there  were  set  free  many  colored  seam 
stresses,  mostly  mulattos.  I  now  know  of  none 
in  the  business  as  a  trade. 

One  reason  why  negro  farm  laborers  are  becom- 


56  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

ing  scarcer  and  more  worthless  every  year  is  not 
because  the  whole  race  is  traveling  down  grade,  but 
because  many  of  them  are  doing  well  in  buying 
land  and  setting  up  for  themselves.  Another 
cause  is  that  many  of  them  migrate  to  the  towns 
and  cities.  There  some  find  a  precarious  living 
and  some  do  well  as  porters,  carriage  drivers, 
freight  and  lumber  handlers,  and  in  similar  work. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE  NEGRO  THE  MOST  CONTENTED  OF  ALL  RACES 

As  a  race  the  negroes  were  more  contented, 
happier,  made  more  progress  in  morality  and 
practical  knowledge,  were  better  fed,  better  de 
veloped,  physically  and  mentally,  were  more  ele 
vated  in  spirit,  had  fewer  troubles  and  more  pleas 
ures  in  slavery  than  in  freedom;  yet  doubtless  all 
or  nearly  all  of  them  desired  freedom,  and  still 
prefer  it  to  slavery.  I  have  found  a  few  that  pre 
ferred  slavery,  and  many  that  agree  with  what 
I  have  said  in  comparing  their  states  of  slavery 
and  of  freedom.  They  get  sentimental  pen  pic 
tures,  telling  what  good  times  they  had  living  with 
"  ole  master  " — how  well  they  were  treated,  how 
little  trouble  they  had,  how  no  thought  of  food 
and  clothing  bothered  them,  for  they  knew  those 
things  would  come,  and  how  they  looked  at  ole 
master's  barn  and  smoke-house  and  hog-pen  and 
saw  plenty,  and  called  them  ours. 

Of  all  living  men  the  negro  in  his  contentment 
is  the  hardest  to  disturb.  In  poverty,  in  jail,  on 
the  rock  pile,  in  slavery  or  freedom,  at  home  or 

57 


58  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

abroad,  he  bears  his  condition  with  patience,  sulks 
not,  broods  not  over  his  troubles,  seems  to  think 
his  lot  is  a  matter  of  course,  and  enjoys  what  lit 
tle  pleasure  may  be  found  in  it.  In  this  respect, 
he  seems  fitted  for  slavery.  As  far  as  they  were 
tried,  the  Indians  were  unprofitable  as  slaves. 
They  sulked  and  failed  in  health.  If  freedom 
has  bettered  the  negroes'  condition,  it  cannot  be 
proved. 

The  negro  had  more  liberty  in  slavery  than  he 
now  has  in  freedom.  In  slavery  he  was  always 
in  a  good  humor,  and  sang  much  while  at  work. 
A  young  negro  boy  in  his  teens  or  later,  off  by 
himself,  had  a  whoop  he  would  give  hours  at  a 
time.  It  was  something  like  this:  "eh-oo,"  with 
a  flute-like  change  from  one  note  to  the  other.  It 
was  whooped  once,  and  then  twice  in  quick  suc 
cession.  I  never  hear  it  now.  It  gradually 
ceased  during  the  first  twenty  years  of  freedom. 
The  negro's  freedom  possibly  may  yet  prove  the 
same  to  him  as  civilization  has  to  the  Indians,  and 
to  the  South  Sea  Islanders — more  destructive 
than  elevating. 

The  question  now  arises,  "  Can  the  negro  be 
elevated?"  "  Yes,"  say  the  preacher  and  the 
Northern  press,  "  by  education  and  the  Gospel 
he  can  be  elevated."  The  South  looks  on  with 
doubt  and  says  nothing.  The  negro  has  had 


MOST    CONTENTED   OF   ALL   RACES  59 

freedom  now  nearly  fifty  years,  and  this  is  the 
consensus  of  opinion  among  those  who  know  the 
race  best — the  farmers.  The  race  as  a  whole  is 
on  the  down  grade.  All  are  not.  The  opinion 
prevails  almost  universally  that  the  negroes. are 
now  less  intelligent,  less  moral  and  reliable,  less 
thrifty  and  industrious,  less  polite,  less  respectful 
to  white  folks.  That  they  have  more  religion, 
more  book  knowledge,  and  are  more  incontinent 
and  thievish.  Some  farmers  object  to  employ 
ing  religious  negroes,  because  they  lose  too  much 
time  attending  church. 

Their  education  is  a  sort  of  rote  training,  and 
they  make  little  or  no  application  of  it.  It  does 
not  enable  them  to  think  and  reckon  upon  results. 
As  I  have  said,  the  negro  must  learn  by  doing; 
he  does  not  understand  what  he  reads. 

I  think  schools  might  do  some  good  if  a  course 
of  instruction  and  text-books  were  used  different 
from  those  used  in  schools  for  white  children. 
But  if  this  were  done  the  cry  would  be  raised  of 
discrimination  against  the  negro.  As  colored 
schools  are  usually  taught,  they  hamper  the  mind 
more  than  they  develop  it.  It  is  unbelievable  how 
the  colored  pupils  mix  up  unpardonable  errors 
with  some  correct  knowledge — not  understanding. 
They  are  often  put  in  studies  beyond  their  ability 
to  comprehend. 


60  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

A  seventh  grade  bright  boy  in  a  high  school, 
and  even  studying  Latin,  was  asked  how  he  was 
getting  on  in  grammar.  He  replied,  "  The 
'fessor  said  we  didn't  know  the  verb  well  enough, 
and  he  turned  us  back  to  the  '  I  ams '  and  the 
*  you  ams.' '  One  who  had  completed  geography 
did  not  know  the  north,  east,  south  or  west  sides 
of  the  map.  Another,  on  being  asked  the  capital 
of  the  United  States,  said  "  It's  Roosvel."  "  In 
what  State?  In  Tennessee  or  Mississippi?" 
"  It's  in  Miss'ippi."  "  In  what  county,  Tate  or 
De  Soto  ?"  "  It's  in  Tate."  Such  questions  and 
answers  might  be  multiplied  to  any  extent. 
Many  answers  almost  as  bad  might  be  quoted 
from  the  examinations  of  colored  teachers.  If 
book  education  has  benefited  the  race,  the  plant 
ers  have  not  found  it  out. 

As  before  stated,  the  mind  of  the  black  attains 
its  full  growth  a  few  years  before  his  body  ceases 
to  grow,  while  that  of  the  white  child  does  not 
attain  its  full  growth  till  five  to  ten  years  after  his 
body  has  its  full  size.  There  seems  to  be  no  great 
difference  between  the  mental  capacity  of  colored 
and  white  children,  but  before  the  twenties  are 
reached  the  breach  widens.  Either  one  may 
greatly  improve  and  strengthen  his  mind  after 
maturity,  as  an  athlete  develops  his  bodily 
strength  and  activity  by  training.  When  the 


MOST  CONTENTED  OF  ALL  RACES     6 1 

mind  or  body  matures  it  takes  on  no  more  growth, 
but  has  attained  its  highest  capacity  for  training. 
It  is  like  a  well-ripened  seed,  which  has  within  it 
its  greatest  capacity  for  development,  but  has 
not  attained  that  development.  I  would  place 
the  matured  capacity  of  the  black  at  about 
eighteen,  and  of  the  white  at  about  thirty.  This 
makes  a  wide  difference  in  the  benefit  the  two  may 
receive  by  training. 

The  negro  is  capable  of  learning  some  by  rote 
education,  but  his  book  knowledge,  for  want  of 
understanding,  is  of  but  little  use.  He  cannot  un 
derstand  verbal  instructions  plainly  given;  he 
learns  only  by  showing,  by  imitating  and  doing. 
Much  less,  then,  can  he  understand  book  in 
structions. 

As  he  approaches  sexual  development,  he  fails 
in  further  book  learning.  His  developing  pas 
sions  seem  to  rob  his  mind  and  conscience  of  food 
to  administer  to  the  strong  demands  of  his  genital 
organs.  He  can  learn  the  use  of  language,  but 
not  of  grammar,  and  in  all  advanced  studies  like 
philosophy,  logic,  mathematics,  he  is  a  failure.  I 
am  aware  that  a  few  negroes  have  stood  well  and 
won  honors  in  great  universities,  but  I  have  no 
account  of  any  full-blooded  negro  among  them. 
I  do  not  believe  one  in  a  million  of  them  is  capable 
of  such  training. 


62  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

There  is  a  great  difference  in  individual  negroes 
in  their  comprehension  of  numbers.  I  have  oc 
casionally  found  both  men  and  women  who  could 
not  subtract  9  from  n,  or  5  from  7.  One  I 
tried,  a  fifty-year-old  man,  on  these  numbers,  and 
by  his  counting  aloud  I  found  he  did  not  subtract 
at  all,  but  counted  to  what  he  thought  about  right, 
and  then  guessed.  In  subtracting  9  from  n,  he 
counted  to  10  and  said  it  left  i, — then  again  he 
counted  to  7  and  gave  that  as  the  remainder. 
One  time  he  counted  13  and  said  it  left  13;  but 
he  finally  got  it.  In  this  way  he  could  generally 
subtract  one  from  a  number  and  he  would  even 
sometimes  miss  this.  If  one  will  investigate  he 
will  find  many  surprises  of  this  kind. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  investigator  will  find 
many  negroes  surprisingly  quick  on  numbers. 
Many  years  ago  there  was  a  Virginia  negro  of 
remarkable  powers  of  calculation.  His  gift  was 
first  noticed  by  his  counting  the  number  of  grains 
in  a  bushel  of  wheat,  and  next  in  counting  the 
hairs  in  a  cow's  tail.  He  was  as  great  a  prodigy 
in  numbers  as  Blind  Tom  was  in  music.  He  could 
multiply,  divide,  add  or  subtract  any  numbers  up 
into  the  millions  seemingly  by  instinct,  but  could 
not  tell  you  how  he  did  it. 

Some  of  the  Southern  tribes  in  Africa  are  de 
ficient  in  observing  quantity.  It  is  related  of 


MOST  CONTENTED  OF  ALL  RACES     63 

white  traders  that  they  will  show  a  negro  a  plug 
of  tobacco  and  sell  it  to  him,  then  turn  about  and 
hand  the  negro  a  half  plug  without  the  latter's 
perceiving  the  cheat.  With  such  foundations  to 
build  on,  the  education  of  the  negro  is  an  up-hill 
task.  Blind  Tom  knew  harmony,  but  nothing  of 
its  laws;  the  Virginia  negro  knew  numbers,  but 
nothing  of  rules.  Neither  one  of  these  prodigies 
was  capable  of  learning  anything  in  their  spe 
cialties.  All  that  they  had  was  born  into  them. 

Colburn,  a  white  man  and  a  prodigy  in  num 
bers,  was  capable  of  great  progress  in  mathe 
matics.  If  this  difference  exists  in  the  prodigies 
of  the  two  races,  it  must  also  exist  in  the  ordinary 
minds  of  the  two  races. 

Of  all  races  in  the  world,  the  negroes  are  the 
most  superstitious.  When  a  boy  I  was  often  out 
at  night  in  one  of  the  negro  cabins  where  I  heard 
ghost  tales,  and  of  tricks  and  conjuring,  and  such 
like  strange  things  till  I  was  afraid  to  go  in  the 
house  and  had  to  have  some  of  the  negroes  carry 
me.  Other  boys  of  my  neighbors  gave  the  same 
experience.  Every  chronic  disease  of  a  negro  is 
attributed  to  a  spell  some  other  negro  has  put  on 
him;  especially  if  there  is  anything  peculiar  about 
the  case. 

Last  year  I  employed  a  cook  who  threw  salt 
water  on  the  yard  gates,  and  rubbed  the  kitchen 


64  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

and  dining-room  doors  with  a  rag  dipped  in  salt 
water.  She  said  she  had  been  tricked  by  a  cer 
tain  person  and  was  doing  this  against  the  effects 
of  it  and  to  keep  off  any  further  tricks.  When  I 
tried  to  disabuse  her  belief  in  such  things,  she 
said:  "I  know  you  white  folks  don't  belief  in 
such,  but  we  black  folks  knows." 

In  sight  of  my  house  there  is  a  home  in  which 
a  white  man  was  shot  to  death  by  his  wife  a  few 
weeks  ago.  My  cook  will  not  go  by  that  house 
alone  at  dusk.  No  one  lives  in  it  now,  but  many 
tale's  are  told  of  noises  heard  and  lights  seen  in  it 
at  night  by  negroes. 

Six  miles  from  here  a  fearful  cyclone  passed  a 
small  village,  completely  demolishing  every  house 
and  killing  quite  a  number  of  people,  negroes  and 
whites.  In  the  work  of  rescue  the  negroes  were 
kind  to  help,  but  not  one  of  them  could  be  induced 
to  touch  a  dead  person  of  their  own  color,  and 
everywhere  they  kept  close  to  the  white  people 
and  could  not  be  separated  from  them  more  than 
a  few  steps. 

The  same  extreme  may  be  said  of  their  gulli 
bility  as  I  have  remarked  of  their  superstition. 
An  auctioneer  of  patent  medicine  will  set  up  at 
some  corner;  soon  a  crowd  of  negroes  will  gather 
about  him,  and  buy  liberally.  One  who  has  never 
had  a  pain  will  buy  a  bottle  of  "  pain-killer,"  or 


MOST  CONTENTED  OF  ALL  RACES     65 

anything  else  that  is  up  for  sale.  Soon  after  the 
war  there  were  certain  persons  passing  through 
the  South  claiming  to  be  from  the  North,  selling 
government  land  titles  to  negroes,  on  condition  of 
a  small  payment  in  advance,  and  giving  various 
reasons  for  profound  secrecy  till  a  certain  date. 
Many  negroes  were  taken  in.  The  negroes  for 
a  long  while  after  their  freedom  lived  on  the  hope 
of  "  forty  acres  and  a  mule  "  to  be  given  them 
by  the  government. 

The  innocent  creatures  are  easily  led  into  al 
most  any  absurdity,  especially  if  it  is  anything 
about  politics,  proposed  by  a  Yankee.  There  is 
only  one  way  he  can  not  be  gulled.  He  believes 
nothing  a  Southern  man  says  to  him  about  politics. 
In  sickness,  law,  debt,  fights,  troubles  with  neigh 
bors,  he  never  thinks  of  going  to  a  man  from  the 
North,  and  rarely  to  a  Republican  in  the  South, 
for  advice  or  help.  He  invariably  goes  to  a 
Southern  man,  generally  to  his  old  master  or  some 
of  the  family  if  near  them.  This  shows  where  his 
real  trust  is,  and  where  his  gullibility  is. 


CHAPTER    IX 

THE    NEGRO    LIVES    IN    THE    PRESENT 

THE  negro  of  the  South  regards  but  little  the 
past  or  the  future.  He  lives  preeminently  in  the 
present.  He  can  make  up  with  the  bitterest 
enemy  and  forgive  any  injury  if  the  present  offers 
any  inducement  for  friendship.  He  bears  malice 
in  his  heart  not  much  longer  than  the  time  of  ac 
quiring  it. 

In  this  respect  he  greatly  differs  from  the  In 
dian,  who  never  forgets  an  injury  or  a  favor.  He 
will  watch  twenty  years  for  an  opportunity  to  get 
revenge;  and  he  will  be  glad  any  time  to  return  a 
favor.  The  same  is  true  of  the  white  man,  but 
not  to  an  equal  extent  with  the  Indian.  The  ne 
groes  are  not  so  cruel  as  the  whites.  The  higher 
races,  as  a  rule,  are  more  cruel  than  the  lower 
races;  they  are  more  inventive  of  means  of  torture 
and  are  more  relentless  in  its  application  when 
they  give  way  to  their  feelings  of  revenge.  The 
negro  has  greater  apathy  to  the  suffering  of  an 
enemy  or  even  of  anyone,  than  the  white  man,  and 
his  sympathies  of  both  friendship  and  enmity  are 
weak. 

66 


THE    NEGRO  LIVES   IN   THE   PRESENT         67 

The  history  of  the  ancient  kings  and  nations; 
the  ten  bloody  persecutions  of  the  Christians  un 
der  the  Roman  emperors;  the  religious  wars,  the 
Inquisition  led  by  Spain,  the  hundred  thousand 
Protestants  butchered  in  France  on  St.  Bartholo 
mew's  day — all  these  things  attest  the  excessive 
cruelty  of  the  white  man.  No  nation  in  Europe  is 
guiltless  of  such  charges. 

This,  however,  is  nothing  against  the  Christian 
religion  or  the  high-grade  individual  of  the  proud 
Aryan  race.  It  shows  that  these  people  have 
most  intense  feeling.  The  rule  is,  the  greater 
the  gift,  the  more  ruinous  its  results  are  when 
pursuing  a  mistaken  course.  A  railway  train 
causes  much  greater  damage  when  it  flies  the 
track  than  a  horse-car  or  horse  and  buggy  can  do. 
So  when  man's  religious  sentiments  fly  the  track, 
they  produce  more  wreckage  of  human  life  than 
any  other  powers  of  his  mind.  Whatever  is  po 
tent  for  the  most  good,  is  potent  for  the  most 
evil.  The  Indians  are  cruel,  but  they  never  went 
into  wholesale  burnings  like  the  pale-faces.  The 
Indians  burned  only  their  enemies;  the  pale-faces 
burned  their  kith  and  kin,  if  enemies  only  to  their 
religious  convictions.  Whole  sections  of  country 
have  been  wiped  out — men,  women,  and  children 
— by  the  sword  of  religious  intolerance.  The 


68  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

negroes  and  the  Indians  are  guiltless  of  all  such 
barbarity. 

The  negro's  cruelty  arises  more  from  a  want  of 
sympathy  than  from  malicious  revenge.  It  is 
provoked  almost  as  much  by  small  offences  as  by 
great.  His  sexual  propensities,  not  his  religious 
sentiment,  are  the  strongest  motive  powers  of  his 
nature,  and  drive  him  to  commit  greater  outrages 
than  does  his  anger,  or  hatred,  or  malice,  or  love, 
or  religious  sentiment,  or  love  of  money,  or  any 
other  motive  power.  Many  a  brute  has  killed  a 
small  white  girl  and  used  the  knife  to  make  a 
bloody  way  for  his  hellish  lust.  And  this,  too, 
without  anger  or  hatred  of  any  kind,  or  any 
thought  of  his  future  suffering  for  the  crime. 

One  excuse  may  be  given  in  a  slight  palliation 
of  his  cruelty  or  rather  apathy  to  human  suffer 
ings.  The  negroes  themselves  suffer  little  in  com 
parison  to  what  "  white  folks  "  do,  either  in  the 
pains  of  bodily  affliciton  or  in  the  anguish  of  sor 
row.  This  is  a  well  established  fact  with  regard 
to  their  physical  suffering;  and  I  can  bring  to  bear 
the  opinion  of  all  Southern  planters  together  with 
my  own  observations  as  to  their  light  mental 
suffering. 

During  the  days  of  slavery,  husbands  and  wives, 
iparents  and  children  were  sometimes  separated. 


THE    NEGRO    LIVES    IN   THE    PRESENT         69 

On  the  day  of  parting,  expressive  sobs  and  signs 
of  sorrow  were  made,  but  all  was  soon  over  with 
and  most  of  them  were  soon  as  happy  as  ever. 
They  give  more  outward  expression  to  any  grief 
or  excitement  than  white  people  do.  Their  sor 
row  for  departed  relatives  is  manifested  mostly 
on  the  funeral  occasion.  As  they  live  in  the 
present,  their  memory  is  little  rankled  by  sorrows, 
or  delighted  by  the  pleasures  of  the  past,  and  their 
spirits  are  sprung  but  little  by  any  hopes  or  fears 
of  the  future.  The  penitentiary  has  few  terrors 
for  them. 

The  greatest  legal  farce  that  stands  upon  the 
penal  code  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  the  peni 
tentiary  for  the  negro,  and  the  greatest  political 
folly  is  investing  him  with  the  elective  franchise. 
Gratitude  is  wanting  in  him,  because  it  pertains 
to  the  past,  and  malice  is  wanting,  because  it  per 
tains  to  the  future. 

We  will  suppose  an  illustration :  A  vicious  pig 
is  found  in  the  streets  of  Memphis.  The  mayor 
is  notified;  he  calls  a  council  of  all  his  officials; 
the  assembly  is  gathered;  the  matter  is  decided. 
The  city  marshal  is  instructed  to  take  a  posse  of 
men  and  go  and  arrest  the  pig  without  dogs,  lest 
they  tear  its  ears,  and  to  bring  said  pig  into  court. 
The  lawyers  assemble  and  a  jury  is  impaneled. 


70  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

After  much  debating,  it  is  decreed  that  the  pig 
shall  be  put  in  a  pen  for  one  year,  kept  reason 
ably  well  on  coarse  but  sufficient  food,  and  then 
set  free — all  of  course  at  the  city's  expense.  One 
can  imagine  how  such  a  course  would  punish  the 
pig  and  reform  its  nature,  and  what  influence  it 
would  have  in  preventing  other  pigs  from  vicious 
habits. 

A  negro  steals  a  sheep.  The  sheriff  and  mag 
istrate  attend  to  his  wants  till  the  session  of  court. 
He  has  no  further  need  to  steal  a  sheep,  for  the 
county  feeds  him.  The  lawyers  from  various 
parts  appear;  the  witnesses  are  examined  and  re- 
examined;  and  to  cut  the  story  in  the  middle,  the 
case  is  thoroughly  piggified.  After  he  leaves  the 
penitentiary  he  will  soon  be  found  again  with 
wool  in  his  teeth. 

He  lost  no  caste,  suffered  no  disgrace,  was  as 
well  fed  and  clothed  as  usual,  was  not  in  the  least 
mortified  or  in  any  way  severely  punished.  All 
he  suffered  was  the  loss  of  opportunity  for  lustful 
gratification — and  that  was  all  the  pig  suffered. 
Shakespeare  never  represented  "  Much  Ado 
About  Nothing  "  better  than  this  case  does.  In 
stealing  the  sheep  the  negro  was  in  far  greater 
dread  of  being  caught  and  whipped  by  the  owner 
than  he  was  of  court  punishment.  The  whipping 
post  is  the  best  for  all  such  cases. 


THE    NEGRO  LIVES    IN   THE   PRESENT         71 

One  characteristic  of  the  negro,  arising  from 
his  contented  nature,  and  his  disregard  of  the  fu 
ture  and  the  past,  is  his  want  of  remorse.  No 
matter  how  much  a  negro  has  injured  one,  he  is 
little  troubled  about  it.  Leave  your  stock  in  his 
care  and  he  may  let  them  die  from  starvation  and 
want  of  care,  but  you  will  not  be  able  to  detect  any 
remorse  in  him.  He  may  give  some  little  evi 
dence  of  sorrow  that  the  animal  is  dead,  but  he 
will  exhibit  no  remorse.  If  he  is  careless  about 
putting  up  the  gap  and  thus  allows  stock  to  break 
over  and  greatly  damage  his  employer's  garden  or 
field,  he  may  exhibit  anger  at  the  stock,  but  no 
hurt  of  his  conscience.  If  he  wishes  to  leave  his 
employer  for  a  better  job,  no  consideration  for 
the  interest  of  his  employer — no  matter  how  great 
the  injury  caused  by  his  leaving,  he  will  go;  no 
appeal  to  his  sense  of  right  can  induce  him  to  re 
main.  This  characteristic  of  his  caused  the  State 
of  Mississippi  to  pass  a  law  that  a  laborer  hired 
for  a  certain  time  should  not  be  employed  by  an 
other  party  during  that  time.  Our  Northern 
friends  made  a  great  complaint  of  the  unjustness 
of  this  law,  but  they  do  not  know  the  negro  and 
can  not  learn  that  different  laws  and  schools 
ought  to  be  established  for  the  negro  and  the 
white  man.  The  nearest  extinct  trait  of  his  na 
ture  is  his  diminutive  conscience.  Many  excep- 


72  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

tions,  of  course,  may  be  found,  but  this  is  a  race 
character. 

The  old  slavery  plantation  laws  are  the  only 
ones  that  have  been  beneficial  to  the  negro.  Un 
der  them  he  was  restrained,  controlled  and  put  in 
process  of  development.  It  was  a  petty  despot 
ism,  but  the  self-interest  of  the  despot  made  him 
merciful  to  his  subjects  and  made  him  protect 
them.  No  despotism  on  earth  was  more  mild 
and  merciful  than  was  the  average  despotism  of 
the  old  Southern  plantation.  "  The  master's 
lash  "  was  an  expression  of  our  Northern  cousins 
by  which  to  sum  up  all  the  terrors  and  horrors  of 
slavery,  and  was  repeated  for  a  thousand  times 
more  than  its  reality  justified.  It  did  not  severely 
sting  the  negro's  flesh,  mortify  his  pride  or  cow 
his  spirit.  The  negro's  flesh  is  not  sensitive  to 
pain  like  the  white  man's;  he  has  no  great  pride 
of  independence  so  as  to  be  mortified,  and  no 
spirit  of  ambition  to  be  broken.  The  memory  of 
it  was  in  the  past,  and  he  wasted  few  regrets  in 
that  direction;  he  lived  in  the  present  while  the 
lash  was  laid  on  and  that  was  soon  over  with. 
Slavery  accompanied  with  the  lash  would  kill  an 
Anglo-Saxon,  but  it  was  a  very  different  thing 
with  the  African.  Abolition  oratory  always 
made  good  Yankees  out  of  the  slaves  except  in 
color.  If  this  oratory  had  represented  facts  as 


THE   NEGRO    LIVES    IN   THE    PRESENT         73 

they  saw  it,  the  negroes  would  have  about  all  been 
dead  by  1860.  If  our  Yankee  brethren  under 
stood  the  negro's  nature,  his  want  of  gratitude 
and  malice,  his  incapacity,  his  contented  nature, 
his  want  of  elevated  manhood,  as  we  of  the  South 
understand  him.  I  think  they  would  be  willing 
again  to  kidnap  him  and  sell  him  into  slavery. 

Senator  Ingalls  once  wanted  to  know  by  what 
process  the  negroes  in  the  South,  in  whose  care 
our  wives  and  daughters  were  left  during  the 
war,  and  who  proved  almost  universally  faithful, 
have  since  been  transformed  into  demons  of  mur 
der  and  rape? 

I  must  answer  that  they  have  never  been  so 
transformed,  but  they  have  raised  a  rakish  and 
rapish  lot  of  children.  It  is  the  difference  be 
tween  the  raising  and  training  in  slavery  and  that 
in  freedom.  In  slavery  the  negro  was  trained 
and  partly  raised  by  white  folks ;  in  freedom  he  is 
raised  by  negroes  and  trained  by  nobody;  in  slav 
ery  he  was  raised  partly  with  white  children;  in 
freedom,  wholly  with  colored;  raised  in  slavery  in 
close  contact  with  the  whites,  he  learned  to  be 
polite  and  respect  white  people;  in  freedom  his 
manners  and  morals  receive  little  training;  in 
slavery  he  acquired  tribal  patriotism  of  plautian 
nationality;  in  freedom  he  acquires  the  selfishness 
of  an  individual  without  a  tribe;  he  grows  up 


74  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

without  culture  and  refinement  and  without  high 
esteem  for  the  white  race.  In  slavery  he  looked 
to  his  white  folks  as  protectors  in  all  matters;  in 
freedom,  gulled  by  the  Republicans,  he  looks 
upon  white  folks  as  his  political  enemies,  and  is 
no  longer  under  their  restraining  influence.  As 
some  of  them  live  in  laziness,  idleness  nurses  the 
strongest  passion  of  their  natures,  and  when  one 
of  these  negroes  strolls  forth  from  his  uncivilized 
cabin,  and  meets  a  white  girl  upon  the  highway, 
his  brutish  nature  is  fired  by  opportunity  and  the 
presence  of  elevated  female  attraction;  his  un 
tutored  intellect  reckons  no  consequences,  and  his 
lust  knows  no  law  but  gratification. 

Likewise  the  friends  of  the  outraged  consider 
no  law  in  the  execution  of  their  fiery  vengeance. 
All  the  preaching  and  editorials  and  special  laws 
against  lynching  will  no  more  check  the  lynching 
proclivities  of  the  white  man,  in  the  case  of  out 
raged  female  chastity,  than  they  will  check  the 
negro's  propensity  to  gratify  his  unlawful  lust. 
True,  the  race  produces  only  a  few  of  such  lust 
ful  brutes,  but  we  can  not  put  up  with  one  in  a 
thousand.  All  races  produce  some  bad  charac 
ters,  and  these  are  the  product  of  the  colored  race. 


CHAPTER   X 

THE    ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE    FOLLY 

THE  negro  was  promoted  to  the  elective  fran 
chise  on  an  equality  with  the  white  man;  no,  for 
the  vast  majority  of  the  intelligence  and  wealth 
of  the  South  was  disfranchised.  So  the  former 
slaves,  uniting  with  the  carpetbaggers  and  a  few 
others,  most  of  whom  were  of  the  most  ignorant 
class,  ruled  the  State  governments.  Not  since  the 
writing  of  history  has  such  folly  and  political  out 
rage  been  recorded. 

Thousands  of  years  in  the  jungles  of  Africa, 
raised  in  superstition  and  cannibalism,  under 
despotic  chiefs,  and  one  to  two  centuries  in  South 
ern  slavery — such  were  the  qualifications  of  the 
negroes  for  the  ballot — the  right  not  to  rule 
themselves  but  to  rule  over  the  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
This  political  folly  was  doubtless  done  to  secure 
a  Republican  majority  in  the  Southern  States. 
They  ought  to  have  known  that  the  white  man 
could  be  dominated  by  the  negroes  in  this  way 
only  in  the  presence  of  an  army.  And  it  so 
turned  out.  It  increased  the  number  of  repre- 

75 


76  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

sentatives  in  the  South,  and  the  first  effect  after 
the  withdrawal  of  the  troops  was  to  elect  a  Demo 
cratic  President.  The  second  effect  was  to 
solidify  the  South  and  by  the  Australian  ballot 
system,  to  disfranchise  practically  the  negroes. 
The  third  effect  was  to  turn  the  head  of  the  negro 
and  greatly  alienate  the  good  will  and  kindly  feel 
ings  between  the  two  races.  The  negroes  knew 
a  little  of  plantation  lines  and  government,  but 
nothing  of  geography,  of  State  lines  and  national 
government.  Nothing  but  blind  fanaticism  gone 
crazy  over  an  idea  could  have  induced  the  intelli 
gent  North  to  perpetrate  such  political  folly. 

If  it  were  done  to  embitter  our  woes  and  hu 
miliate  our  pride,  our  Northern  brethren  suc 
ceeded  in  gratifying  their  unbrotherly  hearts.  It 
was  fivefold  worse  than  their  freeing  our  slaves, 
burning  our  houses,  laying  waste  our  lands,  and 
conquering  our  people.  It  was  torturing  the  lion 
fighting  in  defense  of  his  family,  after  he  had  been 
wounded  and  caged.  Since  our  Northern  friends 
have  quieted  their  fanaticism  and  laid  aside  some 
of  their  prejudices,  they  acknowledge  that  their 
reconstruction  policy  was  a  "  mistake  " — not  the 
word  by  which  the  South  calls  it. 

But  the  cry  was,  "  Educate  the  negro  and  he 
will  make  a  good  citizen."  We  have  tried  that 
for  nearly  a  half  century,  and  the  contrary  is  the 


THE    ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE    FOLLY  77 

result.  He  has  exchanged  common  sense  for  a 
small  quantity  of  parrot  book-learning;  energy 
for  laziness;  efficiency,  for  shiftlessness — with  a 
moderate  number  of  good  exceptions.  The  lands 
have  declined  most  where  there  are  the  most 
negroes. 

The  American  people  may  as  well  look  the 
problem  square  in  the  face.  The  negro,  as  he  is, 
is  an  incumbrance  to  the  South.  Without  him, 
immigration  from  the  old  free  States  and  from 
Europe  would  pour  in,  the  great  plantations  would 
be  cut  up  into  small  farms,  cities  would  take  the 
place  of  villages,  improved  methods  of  farming 
would  double  the  value  of  land,  the  waste  lands 
would  be  enriched,  and  machinery  would  drive 
out  the  one-horse  plow. 

But  it  is  said  the  negro  is  here  to  stay.  That 
is  true  if  he  behaves  himself.  But  think  of  the 
black  belts  where  there  are  many  negroes  to  one 
white  man.  When  most  of  these  get  a  smattering 
of  education  and  begin  to  want  to  hold  the  county 
offices,  and  to  possess  the  lands;  stirred  up  by  one 
of  their  own  number  or  some  bad  white  man, 
they  may  organize  on  a  large  scale  and  start  out 
to  kill  and  possess.  I  will  give  an  instance  of  this 
in  another  chapter.  I  am  of  the  opinion  that  it 
is  only  a  question  of  time  when  such  attempts  will 
be  made,  and  so  are  some  others.  If  the  attempt 


78  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

should  be  extensive  and  succeed  somewhat  at  first, 
it  would  be  an  end  of  the  negro,  and  the  solution 
of  the  problem  would  be  crimsoned  with  more 
blood  than  was  required  to  break  the  bonds  of 
slavery. 

At  present  the  negroes  are  satisfied  and  peace 
able,  as  much  so  as  at  any  time  since  1865.  But 
times  are  prosperous  and  living  is  easy.  What 
changes  may  take  place  in  the  course  of  time  we 
know  not. 

In  a  former  chapter,  we  gave  one  side  of  the 
crowding-out  process, — how  the  negroes  were  be 
ing  crowded  out  of  the  trades, — we  will  now  give 
the  other  side.  The  colored  people  are  gregari 
ous.  They  were  so  in  Africa,  they  were  so  in 
slavery,  and  are  now  so  in  freedom.  They  have 
taken  whole  localities.  In  many  sections  of  the 
country  one  can  travel  five  to  ten  or  sometimes 
twenty  miles  without  seeing  a  residence  of  white 
occupants.  In  other  sections  the  white  people 
still  live,  and  employ  negro  labor.  These  places 
are  usually  near  some  city.  It  comes  about  in 
this  way:  some  well-to-do  person  moves  to  some 
city  or  town  to  engage  in  business  more  profitable 
than  farming,  or  to  school  his  children.  Then, 
when  a  few  have  moved  out  for  various  causes, 
the  remainder,  having  only  a  few  neighbors,  will 
soon  move  for  more  social  advantages  and  for 


THE    ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE    FOLLY  79 

safety  to  his  females;  then  all  go.  And,  as  no 
white  family  wishes  to  settle  in  such  a  neighbor 
hood,  negroes  flock  there  for  society,  or  to  get 
cheap  rents,  and  some  to  buy  land. 

In  every  city,  certain  sections  are  given  up  to 
negroes,  in  other  sections  no  negroes  live.  Their 
residences  are  nowhere  found  mixed  except  on 
landed  estates  where  the  white  owners  still  live 
and  have  cabins  for  those  who  work  their  lands. 
There  is  a  gradual  drifting  to  the  rich  alluvial 
and  to  the  prairie  lands.  They  get  better  wages 
there,  but  little  or  no  opportunity  to  buy  land. 
In  such  sections  the  few  white  people  live  in  the 
villages,  and  scarcely  any  live  in  the  country  dis 
tricts  except  the  bosses  of  the  estates.  This  sep 
arating  of  the  two  races  continually  goes  on,  the 
negroes  crowding  out  the  white  settlers.  The 
class  of  negroes  living  where  the  white  people 
still  reside  are  usually  more  thrifty  and  intelligent 
than  where  all  are  blacks.  This  crowding  out  of 
the  white  people  by  the  negroes  in  certain  sections 
takes  the  latter  from  under  the  influence  of  the 
whites,  and  there  will  be  found  in  the  later  gen 
erations  a  tendency  to  relapse  into  the  habits  of 
the  African  negroes. 

The  race  war  is  already  upon  us.  A  few  years 
ago,  carloads  of  negroes  seeking  work,  were 
driven  out  of  Illinois  by  State  authority.  Later 


8o  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

the  Springfield  riots  in  the  same  State  resulted  in 
many  deaths  and  in  many  negro  homes  being 
burned,  and  in  most  of  the  colored  people  being 
driven  away.  These  facts,  with  many  others  of 
the  same  sort,  prophesy  evil  of  a  direful  nature. 

The  first  thing  a  young  negro  spends  his  sur 
plus  for  is  a  pistol;  nearly  every  young  negro  has 
one,  and  when  he  is  drinking,  he  has  no  sense, 
gets  mad  at  nothing,  and  shoots  without  cause. 
Street  car  and  railway  conductors  often  meet  with 
such,  sometimes  have  a  shooting  match  and  a 
death,  the  negro  oftener  getting  the  worst  of  it. 
John  Barleycorn  tells  secrets,  and  here  is  what  he 
says,  both  by  actions  and  hints:  "  The  colored 
race  is  ready  for  war  whenever  they  feel  equal 
to  it."  The  white  people  know  and  feel  that  if 
the  black  race  is  not  dominated  and  kept  down, 
bad  ones  among  them  will  keep  the  whites  terror 
ized.  We  will  give  one  instance  out  of  multitudes 
of  such. 

A  gentleman  of  one  of  the  first  and  most  intel 
ligent  families  in  the  South  lived  on  a  country 
plantation  in  one  of  the  best  parts  of  the  country. 
He  had  built  himself  a  fine  residence,  had  raised 
a  family,  and  was  well  prepared  for  comfortable 
and  luxurious  living  for  the  remainder  of  his  days. 
His  children  all  had  married  and  left  him  and 
his  wife  alone.  His  neighbors  were  occasionally 


THE    ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE    FOLLY  8 1 

moving  away,  but  still  he  was  not  without  white 
neighbors.  They  advised  him  to  move  to  town, 
that  it  was  dangerous  to  live  as  he  was.  After 
trying  it  a  few  years  and  feeling  uneasy  for  his 
wife  every  time  he  was  out  of  sight  of  home,  he 
moved  to  town,  leaving  the  home  he  loved,  less 
ening  his  income  and  doubling  his  expenses.  He 
was  practically  living  in  a  siege.  But  they  say 
there  is  no  race  question.  There  are  like  cases  by 
the  thousands  all  over  the  South.  Families  every 
where  are  constantly  leaving  the  country  and 
moving  into  cities  and  villages  for  the  same  rea 
son.  The  dread  of  the  colored  despoiler  of  one's 
home  is  on  the  increase,  and  the  cause  of  it  is 
on  the  increase^  Where  it  will  end  the  future 
alone  will  reveal. 

Notwithstanding  the  encouraging  reports  of 
our  good  missionaries,  we  must  doubt  the  ability 
of  any  of  the  inferior  races  to  rise  to  the  elevation 
of  the  Europeans,  or  even  near  to  it.  The  infe 
rior  races  that  have  accepted  civilization  and 
Christianity  have  declined.  The  people  of  the 
Hawaiian  Islands  furnish  a  mournful  example. 
They  live  in  the  crossroads  of  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
accepted  Christianity  and  sought  enlightenment, 
decreased  in  numbers  and  efficiency.  The  foreign 
residents  seized  the  government  and  turned  it  over 
to  the  United  States. 


82  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

Many  of  the  Pacific  islands,  especially  those  of 
the  South  Seas,  have  been  converted  to  Christian 
ity,  and  the  glowing  reports  of  the  missionaries 
have  been  read  with  gladness  and  joy  by  the  re 
ligious  world.  I  have  read  of  none  that  have  in 
creased  in  numbers  or  morals,  but  all  I  have  read 
of  are  traveling  down  grade.  The  Indians  of 
America  furnish  another  sad  example.  Mission 
aries  have  worked  zealously  among  them  from  the 
first  settlements  to  the  present  day,  and  civiliza 
tion  is  still  rapidly  pushing  them  to  extinction. 
To  whatsoever  people  God  gives  the  Bible,  the 
devil  gives  the  bottle.  Opportunities  and  seduc 
tions  to  evil  increase,  and  keep  equal  step  with 
opportunities  and  inducements  for  good.  If  the 
tribe  turns  to  the  evil  more  than  to  the  good,  it 
goes  down.  The  bottle  kills  the  body  before  the 
Bible  saves  the  soul. 

The  natives  of  Australia,  Tasmania,  and  the 
New  Zealand  Islands  are  going  like  the  Indians 
of  America.  Civilization  and  missionaries  so  far 
have  left  no  tracks  among  the  natives  of  Africa. 
Hayti  and  Santo  Domingo  are  deplorable  exam 
ples  of  freedom  and  independence.  The  world 
has  had  time  to  try  many  of  the  low  grade  tribes 
and  races,  and  in  every  instance  with  bad  effect. 

With  great  nations,  such  as  China  and  Japan, 
sufficient  time  has  not  yet  passed  to  be  considered 


THE    ELECTIVE-FRANCHISE    FOLLY  83 

test  cases.  So  far,  progress  seems  favorable,  but 
when  European  civilization  and  religion  shall 
have  become  generally  recognized  and  adopted, 
they  may  have  a  very  different  effect  from  what 
we  now  anticipate — may  affect  the  head  only  and 
not  the  heart.  We  do  not  believe  that  Christian 
ity  causes  the  bad  effect,  but  that  the  race  is  not 
able  to  stand  the  corrupting  influence  of  civilized 
life.  This  is  not  strange,  when  we  see  so  many 
of  our  own  people,  in  the  enlightened  twentieth 
century,  raised  under  the  Gospel,  not  able  to  with 
stand  the  alluring  temptations  of  civilized  life. 
We  should  not  be  surprised  at  the  fall  of  an  infe 
rior  race  when  subjected  to  the  many  evils  which 
thin  rank  after  rank  of  the  gallant  youths  of 
proud  America. 

Hugh  Miller's  opinion  of  the  inferior  races  was 
that  they  would  be  driven  to  extinction.  The  na 
tions  of  Europe  have  carved  up  Africa,  and  are 
now  colonizing  it,  and  future  generations  will  see 
whether  or  not  the  black  men  will  go,  as  have  the 
red  men  of  America. 

In  all  I  write  I  wish  it  considered  that  I  am 
writing  about  the  negroes  as  a  race,  not  as  indi 
viduals.  I  repeat  what  Senator  Money  said  in  a 
speech  in  the  Senate:  "Our  Northern  friends 
like  the  negroes  as  a  race  and  despise  them  as  in 
dividuals;  while  we  of  the  South  dislike  them  as 


84  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

a  race,  but  like  them  as  individuals."  This  is  an 
important  distinction,  and  Senator  Money  is  the 
first  to  notice  it.  I  have  never  employed  any 
white  servants,  and  I  greatly  prefer  colored  ones 
with  all  their  weaknesses.  There  is  still  a  very 
kindly  feeling  among  the  white  people  for  negroes 
as  individuals.  If  the  Southern  people  were  al 
lowed  to  make  suitable  laws  and  distinctions,  they 
could  manage  the  race  as  well  as  they  now  do  the 
individuals  in  their  employ.  Laws  suitable  to  the 
white  man's  progress  spoil  the  negro,  and  laws 
suitable  for  the  negro  would  produce  a  revolution 
among  white  people.  What  restraint  would  our 
laws  have  upon  the  Tartars,  the  Moors,  or  the 
Hottentots? 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE    CARPETBAGGERS   AND   RIOTS 

IN  this  chapter  we  can  speak  but  briefly  of  the 
carpetbaggers,  and  that  only  to  show  the  gulli 
bility  of  the  colored  race.  If  one  wishes  a  good 
history  of  the  terrible  days  of  reconstruction  he  is 
referred  to  the  history  of  those  times  by  that  ad 
mirable  writer,  Gen.  Stephen  D.  Lee. 

It  was  through  the  influence  of  the  carpet 
baggers  that  the  negro  riots  of  the  South  were 
gotten  up.  The  meanest  and  dirtiest  class  of  hu 
man  beings  that  were  ever  in  the  South  were  these 
cormorants,  and  we  may  add  to  them  many  of  the. 
scalawags  amongst  us,  the  meanest  of  the  negroes 
not  excepted.  They  were  at  the  bottom  of  the 
riots  and  were  encouraged  in  their  diabolical  work 
by  the  misguided  press  of  the  North,  by  Congress 
and  by  the  military  authority  of  the  Southern  divi 
sions,  and  when  we  think  of  the  pulpit,  we  must 
say,  "  Et  tu  Brute!  " 

Every  riot  resulted  in  the  killing  of  a  few  ne 
groes  as  a  matter  of  necessity — to  quell  the  riot 
and  insure  self-protection.  Our  Northern  friends 

85 


86  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

were  opposed  to  this  method  and  advised  us  to 
refer  such  cases  to  the  courts.  When  a  mob  comes 
and  threatens  the  burning  of  your  home,  the  tak 
ing  of  your  life  and  your  children's  lives,  and  the 
deflowering  of  your  females,  it  would  be  a  genteel 
course  to  wait  till  your  family  is  killed,  and  then 
appeal  to  the  courts!  And  to  carpetbag  courts! 
Yet  this  very  thing  is  what  we  were  often  pun 
ished  for  not  doing. 

The  carpetbaggers  who  gulled  their  dupes  into 
these  atrocities,  would  write  blood-curdling  stories 
of  such  affairs  to  Congress  and  to  Northern  ed 
itors,  whose  gullibility  was  never  surpassed  by 
any  people,  except  by  the  poor  deluded  negroes 
themselves,  beside  whose  woes  their  tear-shedding 
editorials  pictured  the  white  people  of  the  South 
as  most  cruel,  and  as  untamable  as  savages.  In 
this  way  the  carpetbaggers  flourished  twelve 
years  till  the  beginning  of  President  Hayes's  ad 
ministration.  They  gulled  the  poor  negroes  with 
death  traps,  and  gulled  the  North, — even  Con 
gress  and  President  Grant, — into  the  belief  that 
Democrats  were  murdering  innocent  negroes. 

If  one  of  these  carpetbaggers  was  killed  or  run 
out  of  the  country,  a  fearful  accusation  reverber 
ated  through  the  Northern  States.  The  cry  was 
that  an  awful  outrage  had  been  committed,  and 
that  a  Northern  man's  life  was  not  safe  in  the 


THE    CARPETBAGGERS   AND  RIOTS  87 

South.  The  more  the  Southern  press  would  ex 
plain  and  correct  such  statements  the  more  was 
the  Southern  press  abused  for  defending  such 
atrocities.  Out  of  many  riots  that  occurred  in 
those  days,  I  will  give  the  particulars  of  a  typi 
cal  one,  and  one  that  I  was  in  the  midst  of. 

On  Saturday  night,  June  22,  1874,  the  negroes 
near  Humboldt,  Tenn.,  got  together  in  large  num 
bers  and  made  their  way  to  Milan,  about  ten  miles 
north  of  that  place.  They  arrived  near  Milan, 
and  waited  for  two  other  like  companies  from 
near  the  latter  town  to  meet  them.  Their  pur 
pose  was  to  kill  all  the  white  men,  old  women  and 
children,  then  take  all  the  large  girls,  young 
ladies  and  youthful  wives  for  themselves.  Ac- 
'complishing  this,  they  were  next  to  take  posses 
sion  of  all  the  farms,  stock,  stores  and  other  prop 
erty  and  divide  it  among  themselves.  To  all  of 
which  confession  was  made  by  those  afterwards 
arrested  and  tried.  Many  of  them  had  their 
wives  and  farms  already  picked  out. 

Two  white  men  rode  along  near  this  company 
about  dusk.  Some  of  the  negroes  thought  this  a 
good  time  to  begin  their  work,  so  they  fired  on 
the  two  horsemen,  who  made  their  escape  by  dis 
mounting  and  dashing  through  the  woods.  The 
alarm  was  given,  white  men  collected,  quickly  dis 
persed  the  colored  company,  arrested,  and  tried 


88  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

many  of  them  before  a  magistrate,  and  committed 
sixteen  of  the  most  guilty  to  the  county  jail  at 
Trenton.  But  other  companies  continued  to  col 
lect  and  organize  during  the  next  three  days  for 
carrying  out  their  designs.  All  the  white  men, 
and  especially  the  white  women,  were  alarmed 
beyond  measure.  Now  add  to  these  well-estab 
lished  facts  the  thousand  rumors  of  multitudes  of 
negroes  gathering  here  and  there,  of  attempts,  of 
burnings,  of  attacks,  of  threats,  and  you  will  have 
a  faint  idea  of  the  excitement  and  alarm  of  Sun 
day,  Monday  and  Tuesday,  for  there  were  many 
negroes  in  that  section. 

I  was  in  the  midst  of  it,  though  I  was  not  a 
resident  of  that  place.  About  five  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  I  stopped  at  a  widow's  house  who 
had  several  daughters* — special  friends  of  mine. 
Her  son  was  out  with  the  white  men  looking  after 
the  negroes.  The  lady  and  her  daughters  had 
just  come  up  from  the  woods  where  they  had  been 
hiding  during  the  day,  all  badly  frightened,  and 
so  was  I.  I  had  heard  enough  that  day,  and 
seen  enough  frightened  folks  to  frighten  anybody. 
She  asked  me  to  stay  all  night,  and  said  that  she 
was  badly  alarmed.  I  had  urgent  business  to  go 
on  and  saw  no  good  I  could  do,  for  if  the  negroes 
should  come  I  would  only  lose  my  life.  Besides, 
I  was  afraid  to  stay.  Yet  I  did  not  have  the 


THE    CARPETBAGGERS   AND   RIOTS  89 

heart  to  leave  them.  Let  come  what  would,  I  de 
cided  to  stay.  What  made  the  matter  worse,  the 
son  had  the  only  gun  with  him.  I  should  not  fail 
to  mention  that  a  faithful  old  plantation  negro  of 
the  lady's  was  still  out  with  the  horses  hiding  in 
the  woods. 

However,  nothing  happened  to  us  that  night. 
The  next  morning  the  son  came  in,  having  heard 
many  reports.  I  left  and  drove  into  Milan,  and 
on  arriving  there,  I  learned  that  masked  men  had 
gone  to  Trenton  Tuesday  night,  had  taken  the 
sixteen  negroes  out  of  jail,  had  shot  five  or  six 
of  them  to  death,  and  that  the  remainder  had 
gotten  away  amid  heavy  firing.  The  effect  was 
electrical.  By  daylight  the  negroes  all  over  the 
country  knew  it.  On  Tuesday  scarcely  a  negro 
could  be  found  at  anyone's  house;  by  nine  on 
Wednesday  morning,  scarcely  a  residence  of  a 
white  person  could  be  found  without  negroes ;  they 
had  gone  to  those  whose  land  they  had  been  work 
ing  or  to  their  old  masters  and  asked  protection, 
declaring  they  had  not  been  in  the  riot.  They 
told  the  story  of  the  killing  at  Trenton  and  said 
they  were  afraid.  Thus  ended  the  rising  and  the 
riot. 

The  people  well  understood  the  most  effectual 
and  the  quickest  way  to  put  down  this  rising,  exten 
sive  in  its  ramifications,  appalling  in  its  designs, 


90  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

and  in  the  imminence  of  its  horrifying  execution. 
No  community  ever  felt  more  relief  in  their  es 
cape  from  the  scalping  knife  of  an  Indian  raid 
than  did  the  Milanese,  especially  the  women, 
when  all  was  quiet  again. 

The  people  knew  that  to  save  themselves  they 
must  kill  a  few  negroes.  Would  they  go  out  and 
begin  to  shoot  indiscriminately,  or  shoot  only 
those  whom  they  knew  to  be  guilty?  There  was 
no  time  to  wait.  They  chose  the  latter.  They 
shot  some  and  pretended  to  shoot  at  the  others, 
but  purposely  let  them  escape  to  spread  the  news. 
No  other  arrests  were  made,  although  many  of 
the  guilty  ones  were  known.  No  innocent  negro 
was  hurt,  but  many  guilty  ones  escaped.  The  ne 
groes  taken  from  the  jail  confessed  that  they  had 
organized  three  companies  in  the  county  for  the 
purpose  of  killing  the  whites  and  taking  posses 
sion  of  all  they  desired,  as  we  have  just  stated. 
They  had  bought  all  the  buckshot  and  ammuni 
tion  in  several  of  the  stores,  and  were  evidently 
prepared  for  war. 

The  people  of  Milan  and  of  the  South  were 
fully  persuaded  that  this  and  other  riots  were  got 
ten  up  for  the  special  purposes  of  "  waving  the 
bloody  shirt "  and  of  prolonging  carpetbag  and 
military  rule  in  the  South.  The  instigators  of  this 
riot  were  tenfold  meaner  than  the  deluded  ne- 


THE    CARPETBAGGERS   AND  RIOTS  91 

groes  who  attempted  it.  They  knew  about  how 
it  would  terminate.  They  were  the  most  selfish 
and  hell-inspired  men  in  the  United  States,  either 
in  the  penitentiary  or  out. 

The  potent  carpetbagger  touched  it  off  to  suit 
his  Republican  friends  in  the  North  who  wielded 
the  sword  at  the  time.  The  Northern  press  took 
it  up,  and  tales  of  fiends,  of  brutal  savagery,  and 
the  wailings  of  dusky  innocence  reverberated 
along  the  lands  of  our  government  saviors  and 
national  plunderers  and  warmed  up  the  hearts  of 
the  sword-bearers  who  threatened  to  plunge  their 
steely  blades  into  the  brutal  blood  of  the  negro 
killers. 

The  Southern  press  became  demoralized  and 
condemned  the  lynching  and  the  religious  press 
held  up  its  pious  hands  in  horror.  And  well  they 
might,  for  military  discipline  still  prevailed  in  the 
South.  Federal  soldiers  or  ex-Federal  soldiers 
could  shoot  down  a  Southern  man  with  impunity. 
To  attempt  to  defend  these  lynchers  was  almost 
as  much  as  one's  life  was  worth. 

I  wrote  an  Account  of  the  affair  and  sent  it  to 
the  Milan  paper,  explaining  and  justifying  the 
course  of  the  Milanese,  but  did  not  charge  it  on 
the  carpetbaggers  or  in  any  way  berate  the 
Northern  press.  I  asked  the  editor  to  advise  with 
the  leading  men  of  the  place,  and  if  they  thought 


92  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

it  prudent  to  insert  the  article  in  his  paper,  to  do 
so.  They  thought  it  not  prudent;  that  it  would 
be  unsafe  for  me  and  for  them,  and  I  would  be 
arrested  as  one  of  the  lynchers  and  would  prob 
ably  be  condemned,  as  the  prosecution  could  prove 
anything  they  wished,  and  that  it  would  likely 
provoke  the  Federal  government  to  make  many 
arrests  and  bring  on  much  trouble. 

This  bit  of  history,  I  think,  is  worthy  of  being 
preserved,  as  showing  the  spirit  of  the  North  at 
the  time,  the  extremity  to  which  the  South  was 
reduced,  the  unparalleled  wickedness  of  the  carpet 
bagger,  and  the  gullibility  of  the  negro.  The  ne 
groes  were  "  as  'fraid  as  death  "  of  Northern  au 
thority  and  Federal  soldiers.  Why  did  they  not 
fear  the  authority  and  soldiers  in  this  instance? 
There  can  be  no  question  but  that  they  had  per 
mission  and  were  told  that  the  lands  and  property 
belonged  to  them  and  that  they  were  fools  if  they 
did  not  take  it. 

In  such  times  brave  men  reck  not  the  gory  wail- 
ings  of  misguided  philanthropists,  nor  the  gnash 
ing  teeth  of  relentless  victors,  but  strike  at  once 
for  the  relief  of  their  families.  The  Milanese 
acted  with  prudence  and  the  easiest  way  for 
safety.  They  shed  no  innocent  blood.  The  time 
is  now  come  when  the  good  men  of  the  North 
read  with  shame  the  history  of  their  ancestors 


THE    CARPETBAGGERS   AND  RIOTS  93 

trying  to  force  negro  equality  on  the  South,  as 
they  are  now  ashamed  of  their  earlier  New  Eng 
land  ancestors  putting  witches  to  death.  I  can 
not  see  that  the  negroes  were  so  much  to  blame 
in  this  riot.  They  were  deluded,  and  were  per 
suaded  by  those  who  gave  them  freedom.  Even 
then  they  loved  their  former  owners  and  were 
good  friends  of  the  white  people,  but  they  were 
considering  their  rights  and  relations  with  the 
whites  as  a  race  question.  This  is  an  illustration 
of  Senator  Money's  dictum  about  the  individual 
and  the  race. 


CHAPTER   XII 

A   NEGRO  AUDIENCE 

THE  negro  is  a  great  admirer  of  oratory  and  is 
easily  influenced  by  oratory  that  is  on  the  side  of 
the  majority,  but  it  must  be  of  a  particular  kind. 
To  establish  any  point  before  a  colored  audience, 
if  it  is  on  their  side  of  the  question,  the  orator 
must  make  a  few  statements,  coherent  or  inco 
herent,  pertinent  or  impertinent,  and  then  wind 
up  with  a  kind  of  assertatory  ridicule,  giving  a  pe 
culiar  twang  to  his  voice,  and  his  point  is  proved 
beyond  a  doubt,  and  responded  to  with  stormy 
applause.  One  well-arranged  effort  in  a  few 
short  sentences  will  down  pages  of  fine  logic  and 
elevated  oratory.  I  will  narrate  one  oratorical 
duel  of  this  kind  to  illustrate  my  meaning. 

When  prohibition  was  before  the  people  of 
Tennessee,  some  time  in  the  early  eighties  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  a  debate  was  arranged  for  be 
tween  ex-Governor  Hawkins,  a  Republican,  and 
Col.  Thos.  Richardson,  at  Ripley,  both  able  law 
yers.  The  Governor  was  a  popular  man  even 
with  the  Democrats,  having  been  elected  governor 

94 


A  NEGRO   AUDIENCE  95 

in  a  strong  Democratic  State.  Colonel  Richard 
son  was  a  crafty  lawyer  and  well  understood  the 
negro's  nature  and  capacity.  I  listened  to  their 
speeches  and  studied  them  and  their  effects.  I  did 
not  well  see  how  Governor  Hawkins's  speech  could 
have  been  improved.  It  was  full  of  plain  common 
sense,  and  brought  down  to  the  comprehension  of 
the  negroes;  and  I  thought  it  had  a  fine  effect. 
Much  pains  had  been  taken  by  the  prohibitionists 
to  gather  a  large  crowd  of  negroes  and  to  have 
them  up  near  the  speakers,  while  the  white  audi 
ence  took  back  seats.  The  Governor,  to  make  his 
speech  impressive,  quoted  largely  from  Mr. 
Elaine,  who  at  that  time  was  at  the  height  of  Re 
publican  popularity.  To  excite  prejudice  of  the 
other  side  he  handled  without  gloves  ex-President 
Jefferson  Davis,  who  had  just  written  his  Texas 
letter  against  State  prohibition. 

Colonel  Richardson  was  a  Democrat,  so  all  the 
advantages  were  with  Governor  Hawkins.  In  a 
single  sentence  he  ruined  Mr.  Elaine  and  all  the 
good  things  Governor  Hawkins  had  said  about 
him.  He  said,  "  And  here  is  Jim  Elaine  with  his 
striped  breeches  on,  that  stole  the  Little  Rock 
Railroad,  and  he  says  poor  white  folks  and  nig 
gers  mustn't  be  allowed  to  have  whiskey,"  winding 
up  with  a  peculiar  twang  on  what  Jim  Elaine  had 
said.  The  shock  was  electric  and  accomplished  its 


96  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

work.  It  can  not  be  surpassed  for  tactical  oratory. 
It  was  suited  to  the  hearers  and  carried  them  by 
storm.  It  was  the  kind  of  ridicule  exactly  to  their 
liking  and  spoken  in  a  style  they  appreciated  and 
on  the  side  of  the  question  to  which  they  leaned. 

They  very  highly  respected  Mr.  Elaine,  but 
when  Colonel  Richardson  called  him  "  Jim 
Elaine,"  they  lost  respect  for  him;  when  he  put 
striped  breeches  on  him,  they  had  a  contempt  for 
him;  when  the  Colonel  made  him  steal  the  Little 
Rock  Railroad,  they  felt  like  putting  him  in  the 
penitentiary;  but  when  this  "  Jim  Elaine"  was 
represented  as  connecting  poor  white  folks  and 
"  niggers"  together,  giving  their  race  the  offen 
sive  epithet  of  "  niggers,"  it  was  more  than  they 
could  stand.  "  Poor  white  folks  "  meant  what  is 
sometimes  called  "  poor  white  trash,"  a  class  for 
which  the  negroes  have  a  profound  contempt. 
The  peculiar  twang  which  the  speaker  put  into 
'  Jim  "  Elaine's  mouth  carried  the  whole  sentence 
red  hot,  burning  its  impress  upon  the  negroes' 
minds.  No  previously  stated  facts  or  arguments 
on  earth  could  have  stood  against  this  thrust. 
"  Down  with  Jim  Elaine  with  his  striped 
breeches!  "  was  the  cry,  in  their  stormy  voices, 
and  the  work  was  done.  Elaine  was  ruined,  Haw 
kins  was  ruined,  and  prohibition  was  killed  with 
that  audience  by  that  single  sentence. 


A    NEGRO   AUDIENCE  97 

Having  finished  Mr.  Elaine,  the  speaker  next 
turned  his  attention  to  Jefferson  Davis,  a  name 
often  used  in  those  days  by  Republicans  to  conjure 
up  goblins  to  frighten  negroes.  Having  won  the 
admiration  of  the  audience,  it  was  easier  for  the 
speaker  to  remove  their  prejudice  against  Mr. 
Davis.  But  with  whiskey  on  his  side  and  Mr. 
Elaine  on  the  other  side,  he  succeeded  astonishingly 
well.  The  sentence  he  used  was  about  this: 
"  Here  is  honest  old  Jeff  Davis  who  used  to  own 
many  negroes  and  knew  how  to  treat  them.  He 
says,  *  A  negro  has  as  much  right  to  drink  whis 
key  as  his  rich  master  ever  had.'  '  This  was  the 
end  of  a  climax  about  Mr.  Davis;  it  went  home, 
and  they  hurrahed  for  "  honest  old  Jeff  Davis ! 
He's  my  man !  "  This  is  the  only  occasion  on 
which  I  ever  heard  any  negro  saying  anything  in 
favor  of  Mr.  Davis. 

If  there  ever  was  a  character  a  negro  admired, 
it  was  a  rich  slave  owner;  if  there  ever  was  one 
he  had  a  contempt  for,  it  was  "poor  white 
folks."  Colonel  Richardson  proved  Mr.  Davis 
was  honest  and  fair  because  he  was  for  the  ne 
groes  having  whiskey  as  well  as  rich  white  folks; 
he  clinched  it  by  connecting  together  the  negroes 
and  their  rich  masters;  he  proved  Mr.  Davis  was 
a  great  man  because  he  once  owned  many  slaves, 
and  that  he  was  a  good  man  because  he  treated 


98  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

them  well, — and  they  had  the  speaker's  word  for 
it.  I  have  given  the  two  important  points  in  one 
speech,  one  to  ruin  a  character  that  stood  the  fair 
est  and  very  highest  in  the  colored  man's  opinion; 
and  the  other,  to  raise  a  character  from  the  very 
lowest  depths  to  the  highest  position  of  true  great 
ness.  No  speaker  ever  more  thoroughly  accom 
plished  his  purpose  and  with  less  seeming  effort. 
The  reader  can  judge  for  himself  of  the  amount 
of  logic  used. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

SINGING,     CORNSHUCKINGS,    AND    RELIGIOUS 
REVIVALS 

THE  negroes  are  the  finest  natural  singers  of 
all  races.  They  can  sing  their  lives  away  without 
wearing  out  their  throats.  They  can  sing  as  loud 
as  they  can  holler  and  that  without  strain  of  voice, 
while  the  white  man  can  not  do  half  so  well. 
Often  in  revival  meetings  the  words  of  their  songs 
can  be  distinguished  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away, 
while  the  white  man's  words  in  song  can  rarely 
be  distinguished  at  any  distance.  The  cultured 
voices  of  white  people  are  nearly  all  strained,  a 
condition  easily  observed  by  the  throat  sound. 
Their  organs  of  speech  when  singing  seem  to  sit 
in  a  sort  of  artificial  arrangement  which  prevents 
the  clear  articulation  of  words;  the  negroes'  are 
loose  and  in  a  natural  position  and  capable  of  the 
best  articulation.  Of  all  places  where  words  are 
useless  because  not  heard  is  in  our  fine  church 
choirs,  whose  jaws  and  tongues  seem  stiff  and 
throat  lessened  and  cramped — all  capable  of 
throwing  out  sounds — fine  musical  sounds — with- 

99 


IOO  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

out  words.  The  long  high-toned  scream  seems  to 
be  the  only  note  that  comes  out  in  its  native  dress ; 
and  of  this,  women  singers  are  usually  very  proud. 
The  song  of  a  company  of  white  singers  is  a  con 
cord  of  pleasing  harmony;  in  a  company  of  ne 
groes  it  is  the  same,  with  a  spirit  doubling  the 
sentiment  of  clearly  pronounced  words,  lifting  the 
soul  to  the  highest  degree  of  ecstasy. 

There  was  a  time  when  this  wild  and  heavenly 
spirit  was  heard  in  our  camp-meetings  and  other 
religious  revivals,  but  since  the  organ,  the  horn 
and  the  fiddle  have  been  introduced  to  accom 
pany  the  voice,  congregational  singing  has  ceased 
and  the  song  is  turned  over  to  instruments 
and  voices  without  words  or  spirit — fine  music 
though ! 

One  ought  to  be  able  to  sing  as  loud  as  he  can 
holler  and  to  be  understood  as  clearly;  and  when 
one  can  not,  it  is  because  the  organs  of  speech  are 
in  some  way  cramped — a  fact  of  which  the  singer 
is  usually  unconscious  and  he  will  invariably  deny 
it.  The  test  I  have  given  is  fully  reliable.  I  can 
lecture  by  the  hour  without  tiring  my  voice,  but 
I  can  not  read  twenty  minutes  without  a  break 
down,  yet  I  am  unconscious  of  the  strain  and  can 
not  correct  the  defect. 

If  I  were  going  to  attempt  a  high  order  of  cul 
tured  song  voice  I  would  frequently  sing  with  ne- 


CORNSHUCKINGS   AND   REVIVALS  IOI 

gro  congregations  to  acquire  an  uncramped  use  of 
the  organs  of  speech  and  to  catch  the  art  of  put 
ting  spirit  into  the  music  and  sentiment  into  the 
words.  But  one  of  these  cultured  singers  would 
disdain  to  stoop  to  learn  of  negroes  whose  voices 
were  never  trained.  To  illustrate:  Once  there 
was  a  great  picture  on  exhibition  in  Philadelphia, 
a  picture  of  pigs  eating  out  of  a  trough,  well  ar 
ranged  and  beautifully  in  order.  A  teamster  came 
up,  his  pants  stuffed  in  his  boots,  and  his  long 
driving  whip  in  hand,  and  after  looking  at  the 
picture  a  while,  he  said  that  wouldn't  do  for  pigs. 
The  bystanders  ridiculed  him  for  not  knowing  a 
fine  picture,  but  the  author  of  the  picture  followed 
him  to  one  side  and  asked  him  what  was;  the 
matter  with  the  picture.  He  replied  about  this: 
"  I  know  nothing  about  painting,  but  I  do  know 
about  pigs  eating  in  a  trough,  and  I  never  saw 
them  stand  to  the  trough  like  drilled  soldiers  at 
a  table.  Some  of  them  always  had  one  or  both 
forefeet  in  the  trough  and  often  one  was  standing 
in  the  trough."  The  painter  thanked  him  and 
painted  his  picture  over.  The  negroes  may  know 
nothing  of  scientific  choir  singing,  but  they  have 
a  flexibility  of  voice,  a  clear  articulation,  and  a 
spirit  of  song  that  are  rarely  found  in  any  well 
trained  white  singer;  and  the  latter  would  do  well 
to  learn  a  lesson  from  the  pig  painter,  and  go  to 


102  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

the  negroes  and  learn.  A  negro  can  sing  all  day 
and  never  tire. 

The  cornshucking  was  the  negroes'  great  time 
for  song.  To  get  up  a  big  cornshucking  it  was 
only  necessary  to  invite  one's  neighbors  who  would 
give  the  negroes  permission  to  attend.  No  one 
would  miss  an  opportunity.  The  corn  to  be 
shucked  was  thrown  in  a  pile  by  the  side  of  the 
crib,  and  the  crib  uncovered,  or  the  cover  tilted 
high  on  one  side,  for  many  cribs  were  constructed 
so  that  this  could  be  done.  From  fifty  to  two 
hundred  negro  men  would  come  in  and  gather 
around  the  pile,  shuck  and  talk  for  a  while,  then 
raise  a  song,  call  for  the  jug,  which,  being  passed 
around,  two  captains  would  choose  hands,  divide 
the  pile  by  a  pole  or  rope  stretched  from  the  crib 
across  the  middle  of  the  pile.  Then  each  captain 
with  his  party  to  his  own  side  started  in  for  a 
race.  Some  big  song  leader  would  strike  up  a 
corn  song,  all  would  join  in  the  chorus,  and  then 
the  corn  would  fly.  Two  hundred  hands  would 
keep  more  than  one  hundred  ears  all  the  time  in 
the  air  on  the  way  to  the  crib.  The  little  boys 
would  push  back  the  shucks  (our  Northern  friends 
say  "  husks"  and  "  cornhusking,"  but  the  husks 
are  the  skins  of  the  grain,  called  "bran")  and 
carry  them  off  and  put  them  in  rail  pens. 

The  song  would  move  up,  the  jug  would  pass 


CORNSHUCKINGS   AND   REVIVALS  103 

round,  all  drinking  from  the  mouth  of  the  jug, 
corn  would  fly  faster  and  the  negroes  get  happier. 
The  song  leader  would  often  make  his  own  words. 
The  chorus  was  generally  a  prolonged  haloo  of 
several  notes  and  vowels  but  no  consonants — some 
times  it  was  "  Round  up  the  corn,"  sometimes  the 
song  leader  would  sing,  "  Ole  master,  I's  mighty 
dry;"  then  came  the  chorus,  "  Ole  master  sen' 
roun'  the  jug !  "  or  the  chorus,  "  Oh,  dat  whiskey's 
mighty  good!"  But  the  jug  would  answer  the 
song.  The  time  would  occasionally  change,  and 
sometimes  another  song  leader  would  take  it  up, 
but  the  song  would  scarcely  stop  till  the  pile  was 
finished. 

While  all  this  was  going  on  at  the  crib,  the 
women  at  the  house  were  in  a  great  stir  getting 
up  a  big  supper,  bountiful  for  both  white  and 
black,  for  usually  a  moderate  number  of  white 
men  took  part,  and  a  large  number  of  white  boys ; 
and  often  a  number  of  young  ladies  were  present, 
and  quite  a  number  of  colored  feminines. 

When  the  corn  was  all  "  rounded  up,"  the  pro 
prietor  was  demanded  by  the  negroes,  and  two 
negroes  from  the  winning  side  were  honored  by 
lifting  the  proprietor  on  their  two  shoulders,  one 
leg  resting  on  the  shoulder  of  the  one  to  his  left, 
and  the  other  on  the  shoulder  of  the  one  to  his 
right.  He  usually  steadied  himself  by  grasping 


104  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

his  two  hands  into  the  wooly  heads  of  the  two 
negroes.  The  negroes  would  allow  no  proprietor 
to  back  out  of  this  process  of  honoring  him.  They 
then  marched  to  the  proprietor's  house  and  sev 
eral  times  around  it,  all  the  hands  following  with 
the  corn  song  in  full  blast.  He  was  at  last  set 
down  at  his  door,  and  the  jug  passed  around 
again.  The  whites  and  blacks  then  separated,  the 
whites  going  to  the  "big  house"  to  supper  and 
the  negroes  to  the  kitchen,  which  was  usually  too 
small  for  their  numbers,  in  which  case  the  table 
was  set  out  of  doors.  After  supper  the  negroes 
spent  some  time  in  music  and  dancing.  The  banjo, 
tambourine,  and  fiddle  were  most  commonly  the 
instruments,  and  the  dance  was  no  kin  to  anything 
white  folks  ever  try.  Many  went  out,  each  to  him 
or  herself,  remaining  in  one  place,  and  beating 
time  by  striking  the  heel  and  the  toes  upon  the 
ground  with  varying  whirls  of  the  legs  and  steps, 
all  of  which  had  names.  ;<  To  cut  the  pigeon 
wing  "  was  the  common  and  the  most  admired. 
Sometimes  the  instruments  would  cease,  and  an 
expert  at  patting  would  keep  the  time  for  the 
dancers.  He  would  do  this  by  clapping  his  hands, 
beating  on  his  knees  and  patting  his  foot — all  of 
it  delightfully  indescribable, 

These  dances  would  lift  their  souls  to  ecstasy; 
their  faces  would  beam  with  joy,  and  the  clum- 


CORNSHUCKINGS   AND   REVIVALS  105 

siest  negro  would  dance  with  a  suppleness  and 
wild  grace  that  one  would  judge  impossible  on 
seeing  his  movements  at  other  times.  The  dissi 
pation,  however,  was  not  allowed  to  be  continued 
too  late,  and  as  often  as  the  jug  went  round  I 
never  saw  a  negro  drunk  on  such1  an  occasion. 
Their  jollity  I  suppose  greatly  helped  to  eliminate 
the  effects  of  the  whiskey.  These  cornshucking 
dances,  in  peculiar  attractiveness  of  movements, 
as  far  excel  the  dances  of  the  ballroom  of  the  elite 
white  people  as  congregational  singing  of  the 
blacks  surpasses  the  cultured  whites.  The  young 
ladies  and  young  men  had  their  amusements  in 
"  the  big  house,"  but  the  boys  stayed  out  and 
watched  the  negroes,  and  sometimes  all  others 
would  go  out  and  look  on  a  while. 

Nowadays  the  negroes  sing  and  dance  very  little 
compared  with  what  they  did  in  the  days  of  slav 
ery.  They  now  turn  their  attention  more  to  re 
ligious  revivals.  They  often  continue  a  meeting 
many  weeks.  I  knew  one  revival  to  run  many 
weeks  without  stopping  day  or  night;  some  were 
coming  and  some  were  going  all  the  time.  I  do 
not  wish  to  be  understood  as  intimating  that  there 
is  no  reality  in  their  religion,  but  so  many  of  them 
shout  because  others  do,  and  because  of  hypocrisy, 
and  because  they  think  it  is  their  duty  to  shout 
and  hurrah  for  the  Lord,  that  their  revivals  some- 


106  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

times  appear  farcical.  A  negro  woman  was  once 
asked  if  she  shouted  the  night  previous,  and  she 
replied,  "  No,  it  was  my  night  to  hold,  but  I 
won't  have  to  hold  to-night  and  I  can  shout." 
When  the  shouters  are  not  held,  they  are  likely 
to  hurt  themselves  by  springing  high  in  the  air 
and  falling  over  backwards.  They  have  great 
faith  in  the  holders  catching  them  as  they  fall,  so 
they  lunge  and  plunge  as  much  as  they  are  in 
clined.  Some  have  suggested  that  the  negro's 
idea  of  religion  is  to  shout,  and  that  he  does  not 
comprehend  the  spirituality  of  it.  The  idea  with 
a  few  is  this:  "  I's  been  a  bad  nigger  dis  week; 
ef  I  don'  git  up  and  shout  for  de  Lord  to-night 
He'll  git  me,  so  I'm  gwine  do  my  best  for  Him." 
But  with  all  this  there  seem  to  be  many  good  and 
true  Christians  in  their  churches. 

Their  singing  at  these  revivals  is  grand  and  is 
admired  by  everybody.  They  are  fond  of  chorus 
singing  and  sometimes  the  leader  makes  his  own 
words,  the  same  as  he  used  to  do  sometimes  in 
their  corn  songs.  Some  of  these  are  far  fetched; 
here  is  one : 

"  The  fore  wheels  run  by  the  grace  of  God 
And  the  hind  wheels  run  by  glory!  " 

Chorus — 

"  Hallelujah!" 


CORNSHUCKINGS   AND   REVIVALS  107 

There  is  no  question  in  my  mind  but  that  they 
far  excel  white  people  in  congregational  singing. 
They  are  better  natural  vocalists  every  way  than 
the  whites.  Every  one  who  can  ought  to  attend  a 
few  live  negro  revivals,  for  the  negroes  become 
wholly  absorbed  in  the  swelling  volume  of  vocal 
strains  that  can  be  heard  a  mile,  forget  the  sins 
of  the  past  and  the  gaunt  and  hungry  to-morrow, 
and  their  souls  are  enraptured  in  the  glories  of 
heaven-born  song. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

PLURALITY   OF   THE    HUMAN   RACE 

UNDER  this  heading  we  shall  be  very  brief,  as 
we  have  written  a  separate  volume  with  the  same 
title. 

"  And  it  came  to  pass  when  men  began  to  mul 
tiply  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  daughters  were 
born  unto  them,  that  the  sons  of  God  saw  the 
daughters  of  men  that  they  were  fair;  and  they 
took  them  wives  of  all  which  they  chose."  Too 
early  for  separate  nations  or  tribes  of  Adam's 
children,  "  The  sons  of  God,"  or  "  the  angels  of 
God  "  in  the  Septuagint,  were  strangers  to  the 
Adamites,  an  alien  race,  mentioned  not  by  name 
but  by  description.  "  The  Sent  of  God "  or 
"  Sons  of  God  "  simply  meant  "  Comers"  another 
race  of  men  that  migrated  to  Adam's  Territory, — 
and  when  they  saw  the  fair  white  daughters  of 
Adam,  being  a  powerful  race,  they  took  them 
wives  from  these. 

"  And  the  Lord  said,  My  spirit  shall  not  al 
ways  strive  with  man,  for  that  he  also  is  flesh 
[same  as  sons  of  God].  Yet  his  days  shall  be  an 

108 


PLURALITY  OF  THE  HUMAN  RACE  109 

hundred  and  twenty  years."      (As  short  lived  as 
the  Sons  of  God.) 

"There  were  giants  in  the  earth  in  those  days." 
"  Giants  "  did  not  originally  signify  men  of  huge 
stature,  but  meant  "  earthborn,"  an  appellation  in 
antiquity  for  tribes  or  people  when  their  origin 
was  unknown  and  when  the  best  account  that 
could  be  given  of  them  was  that  they  were  born 
from  the  earth  where  found.  "  The  giants," 
then,  in  the  sixth  of  Genesis,  must  refer  to  people 
living  as  Adam's  neighbors,  and  u  the  angels " 
as  a  people  who  came  there  after  the  Adamites 
settled  the  country. 

"  And  also  after  that  the  sons  of  God  came  in 
unto  the  daughters  of  men  [of  the  Adamites]  and 
they  bare  children  to  them,  the  same  became 
mighty  men,  men  of  old  [high  antiquity  to  the 
Antediluvians],  men  of  renown."  "And  God 
saw  that  the  wickedness  of  men  was  great  in  the 
earth  and  that  every  imagination  of  the  thoughts 
of  his  heart  was  only  evil  continually.  And  it  re 
pented  the  Lord  that  he  had  made  man."  .  . 
"  The  earth  [people]  was  corrupt  before  God 
and  the  earth  was  filled  with  violence  ...  for 
all  flesh  [all  races]  had  corrupted  his  way" 
intermarried,  that  is. 

This  mongrel  race  of  Adamities  and  the  sons  of 
God  were  violent,  revolutionary,  and  incapable  of 


110  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

self-government,  as  all  mixed  races  from  that  day 
to  this  have  been.  "  But  Noah  found  grace  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Lord.  These  are  the  generations  of 
Noah.  Noah  was  a  just  man  and  perfect  in  his 
generations,  and  Noah  walked  with  God.  [Ac 
cording  to  all  God's  laws.]  And  Noah  begat 
three  sons,  Shem,  Ham,  and  Japheth."  Noah  was 
a  just  man — did  not  corrupt  his  flesh  with  an  alien 
wife  "  and  perfect  in  his  generations."  There  was 
no  alien  blood  in  any  of  his  three  sons,  all  were 
pure  blooded,  registered  Adamites.  So  the  Lord 
destroys  the  mixed  races  of  that  day  together  with 
all  Adamites  except  the  eight  pure-blooded  ones 
saved  in  the  Ark. 

In  the  fourth  chapter  of  Genesis  we  find  the  his 
tory  of  Cain.  It  has  never  been  settled  as  to  what 
Cain's  sin  was  that  caused  his  offering  to  be  re 
jected.  It  has  been  suggested  by  J.  W.  Minnick, 
of  Grand  Isle,  Louisiana,  that  he  had  married 
an  alien  wife,  and  there  is  some  reason  for  it.  He 
was  driven  out  from  the  face  of  the  earth  and 
from  all  his  people;  God  had  determined  there 
should  be  no  corrupt  marriages.  Cain  was  not 
afraid  Adam  or  Eve  would  slay  him.  God  talked 
with  Cain  and  urged  him  to  give  up  his  alien  wife. 
"And  the  Lord  said,  why  art  thou  wroth?"  "  If 
thou  doest  well  shalt  not  thou  be  accepted?  "  "  If 
thou  doest  not  well  sin  lieth  at  the  door,"  for  the 


PLURALITY   OF   THE   HUMAN   RACE         III 

reception  of  an  alien  wife — send  her  away  and  it 
will  all  be  right.  Seeing  that  if  he  retained  this 
wife  his  brother  would  supplant  him  in  the  birth 
right,  he  slew  his  brother.  The  Lord,  "  And  unto 
thee  shall  be  his  desire  and  thou  shalt  rule  over 
him,"  provided  you  give  up  your  alien  wife.  This 
seems  to  explain  the  trouble  there  was  about  the 
birthright. 

Cain  said  "  My  punishment  is  greater  than  I  can 
bear,  for  those  savage  people  amongst  whom  you 
send  me  will  slay  me,"  for  there  was  no  one  else 
to  slay  him.  But  when  God  promised  him  that 
these  people  should  not  kill  him,  his  punishment 
was  not  greater  than  he  could  bear.  So  he  went 
out  and  perhaps  lived  amongst  his  wife's  people. 
Then  he  raised  a  family  and  builded  a  city.  At 
any  rate  Cain  must  have  married  an  alien  wife 
either  before  he  was  exiled  or  after.  The  people 
he  was  afraid  would  kill  him  were  certainly  not 
of  Adam's  line. 

"  They  were  eating  and  drinking  and  marrying 
and  giving  in  marriage  and  knew  not  till  the  flood 
came  and  took  them  all  away"  (Mat.  24,  38). 
This  is  significant  language,  if  intermarrying  was 
their  great  sin  on  which  account  the  Flood  was 
sent  upon  them. 

St.  Jude,  in  referring  to  Genesis,  says:  "  And 
the  angels  which  kept  not  their  first  estate,  but  left 


112  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

their  own  habitation  He  hath  reserved  in  ever 
lasting  chains,  under  darkness,  unto  the  day  of 
judgment.  Even  as  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  and 
the  cities  about  them  in  like  manner,  giving  them 
selves  over  to  fornication  and  going  after  strange 
flesh  [alien  wives]  ....  Woe  unto  them,  for 
they  have  gone  in  the  way  of  Cain."  Cain's  being 
mentioned  here  with  the  angels  of  God  carries  the 
reference  to  the  angels  in  the  vi.  of  Genesis,  and 
seems  to  confirm  the  explanation  we  have  given 
of  the  sons  or  angels  of  God  that  they  were  immi 
grants  to  the  land  of  the  Adamites.  And  this  ref 
erence  to  the  Sodomites  and  others  being  guilty 
of  unlawful  lusts  and  saying  they  had  gone  in  the 
way  of  Cain,  explain's  Cain's  sin  in  not  having  his 
offering  respected,  which  we  must  think  was  the 
sin  of  bringing  an  alien  woman  in  his  door. 

"  On  the  day  of  Pentecost  there  were  Jews 
dwelling  at  Jerusalem,  out  of  every  nation  under 
heaven,"  yet  only  the  leading  Caucasian  nations 
were  mentioned.  Universal  terms  in  scripture 
have  certain  limitations.  Out  of  every  Adamic 
or  Caucasian  nation  under  heaven  he  gives  the 
limitation. 

Our  Saviour  said,  "  The  Gospel  must  be  pub 
lished  among  all  nations  "  before  the  fall  of  Jeru 
salem.  St.  Paul  said  that  this  Gospel  had  been 
preached  to  all  nations  in  his  time,  yet  we  have 


PLURALITY   OF    THE    HUMAN    RACE        113 

no  account  of  its  having  been  preached  to  any  but 
the  Caucasians.  "  The  Gospel  which  ye  have 
heard,  and  which  was  preached  to  every  creature 
[of  Adam's  race]  under  the  sun,  whereof  I,  Paul, 
am  a  minister"  (Cor.  1-25).  And  this  Gospel 
shall  be  preached  to  all  the  world  for  a  witness, 
and  then  shall  the  end  be"  (Mat.  xxiv.  14-16), 

Moses,  when  he  was  old,  prophesied  much  good 
to  the  Israelites  if  they  would  continue  obedient  in 
the  ordinances  of  the  Lord  but  dire  calamities  if 
they  should  not.  Here  are  some  of  them:  "  Thou 
shalt  become  an  astonishment,  a  proverb,  and  a 
by-word  among  all  the  nations  whither  the  Lord 
shall  lead  thee."  .  .  .  "  And  the  Lord  shall 
scatter  thee  among  all  people  from  one  end  of  the 
earth  even  to  the  other;  and  among  these  nations 
shalt  thou  find  no  ease,  neither  shall  the  sole  of  thy 
foot  find  rest;  but  the  Lord  shall  give  thee  a 
trembling  heart  and  failing  eyes,  and  sorrow  of 
mind:  and  thy  wife  shall  hang  in  doubt  and  thou 
shalt  fear  day  and  night  and  shalt  have  none  as 
surance  of  thy  life." 

No  prophecy  has  ever  been  more  literally  ful 
filled  than  this.  It  seems  that  from  the  days  of 
Christ  that  killing,  persecuting,  and  expelling 
Jews  and  confiscating  their  property  has  been  the 
business  of  all  Caucasian  nations  and  the  bloody 
work  in  Eastern  Europe  and  in  much  of  Western 


114  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

Asia  still  goes  on.  The  persecution  of  Christians 
under  pagan  Rome  or  of  the  Protestants  during 
the  inquisition  never  equalled  in  cruelty  or  uni 
versality  the  persecution  of  the  Jews.  The  most 
remarkable  part  of  their  history  is  that  any  were 
left.  But  a  remnant  were  to  be  preserved.  Note 
this  well.  They  were  to  be  "  scattered  among 
every  nation  from  one  end  of  the  earth  even  to  the 
other."  The  fulfillment  is,  they  are  scattered  only 
among  the  white  or  Caucasian  nations  and  none 
other — outside  of  these  and  those  mixed  with  Cau 
casian,  no  Jews  can  be  found,  but  wherever  there 
is  a  Caucasian  settlement,  there  will  Jews  be 
found.  Among  the  Indians  of  America,  the 
negroes  of  Africa,  the  Pacific  Islands,  Australia, 
China,  Japan,  Sumatra,  none  are  found  except 
where  the  white  race  has  made  settlements.  All 
nations,  then,  "  from  one  end  of  the  earth  even 
unto  the  other,"  must  refer  only  to  all  Adamite  or 
white  nations,  otherwise  the  prophecy  is  not  ful 
filled. 

The  Eunuch  of  Ethiopia  was  a  white  man  and 
so  were  the  Ethiopians.  The  Manchus  were  once 
called  Tartars,  and  so  they  were,  but  settling 
among  the  Mongolians  they  have  been  so  com 
pletely  absorbed  by  that  race  that  their  Tartar 
origin  cannot  now  be  detected.  At  one  time  blue 
eyes  were  occasionally  seen  among  them  and  so 


PLURALITY  OF  THE  HUMAN  RACE         115 

were  Jews ;  but  blue  eyes  and  Jews  are  now  among 
them  no  longer.  The  Tartars  of  Western  Asia 
are  almost  pure  Caucasians. 

Why  is  it  that  all  these  white  nations  have  at 
various  times  tried  with  most  persistent  efforts  to 
rid  their  respective  nations  of  every  Jew  in  it,  and 
yet  none  has  ever  succeeded?  Why  is  it  that  to 
this  day  they  are  among  all  these  nations  "  an 
astonishment  and  a  by-word." 

"  And  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  the  nations 
of  men  to  dwell  on  the  face  of  the  earth;  and 
hath  determined  the  times  before  appointed  and 
the  bounds  of  their  habitation"  (Acts,  17-29). 
This  chapter  is  often  referred  to  as  evidence  of 
the  unity  of  the  human  race,  but  it  doubtless  means 
only  all  Caucasian  nations.  It  clearly  refers  to 
the  tenth  chapter  of  Genesis  and  in  substance  is  a 
quotation  from  it.  We  quote  from  the  tenth  chap 
ter  as  evidence  that  Paul  alluded  to  this,  and  that 
he  meant  no  inspiration  of  his  own. 

"  These  are  the  sons  of  Shem  after  their  families, 
after  their  tongues,  in  their  lands,  after  their  na 
tions."  The  same  language  is  used  with  reference 
to  the  sons  of  Ham  and  Japheth.  The  writer  then 
sums  up  all  together:  "  These  are  the  families  of 
the  sons  of  Noah,  after  their  generations,  in  their 
nations,  and  by  these  were  the  nations  divided 
after  the  Flood."  Of  course  all  these  were  of  one 


Il6  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

blood.  All  were  strictly  of  the  Causacian  race, 
white  race,  Adamites.  And  the  same  lands  are 
all  inhabited  by  Adamites  to  this  day.  But  since 
the  writing  of  the  book  of  Genesis  some  of  these 
nations  have  become  a  little  mixed  with  negroid, 
and  with  Mongolian  races. 

The  old  idea  that  the  Hamites  were  negroes 
was  a  far-fetched  conclusion  to  start  with,  and  has 
been  proved  false.  The  sons  of  Ham  were  the 
great  leaders  in  civilization  and  empire,  as  in 
Egypt  and  Babylon. 

The  word  "  Ham  "  with  its  derivatives  is  doubt 
less  the  most  universally  distributed  word  in  Cau 
casian  languages,  but  not  in  others  is  it  found. 
It  means  home,  father,  chief,  king,  wisdom,  em 
pire,  heaven,  light,  sun,  God  and  hundreds  of 
other  things.  In  only  one  sense  does  it  mean 
black;  it  means  "  charred,"  the  effect  of  fire,  the 
sun,  or  Ham.  Char  itself  is  derivative  of  Ham. 
cham  or  char*  We  get  one  meaning  of  Ham 
when  it  is  added  to  Abram's  name,  making  it 
Abra-Ham,  because  he  was  to  be  the  father  of 
nations. 

All  Caucasian  races  can  be  traced  to  Noah  by 
history,  mythology,  customs,  language,  and  tra 
dition.  No  other  races  can  be  traced  to  Noah  by 
any  one  of  these  methods. 


CHAPTER   XV 

MISCEGENATION   AND   MIXED  RACES 

SOME  have  suggested  that  miscegenation  would 
solve  the  negro  problem.  This  will  never  be 
tried  in  the  South.  The  prejudice  against  it  is 
increasing,  and  the  number  of  mulatto  children  is 
decreasing.  I  do  not  say  white  men  are  getting 
more  virtuous,  but  they  are  getting  more  cautious. 
Mulattos,  it  is  generally  conceded,  have  less  phys^ 
ical  endurance,  and  less  procreative  ability  than 
either  the  negroes  or  the  whites.  This  is  a  slow 
elimination  of  the  less  fit  to  maintain  the  struggle 
for  life.  The  mulatto  is  quicker  and  brighter  and 
often  has  all  the  aspiration  of  a  white  man,  and 
he  is  dissatisfied  with  his  place  in  nature.  Being 
made  up  of  unlike  and  discordant  elements  of 
character,  he  has  a  nature  warring  with  itself, 
restless  and  discontented.  It  is  so  with  all  mixed 
races  and  breeds  of  men  and  beasts. 

Men  who  advocate  the  mixing  policy  are  cer 
tainly  not  acquainted  with  the  history  of  mixed 
races. 

By  distinct  races  we  mean  such  as  the  Aryan 


Il8  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

or  Caucasian,  the  Mongolian,  the  Malayan,  the 
Australian,  the  American  Indian,  and  the  Negro. 
Jews,  Turks,  Russians,  French,  English,  are  all 
the  same.  The  most  unlike  of  these  races  are  the 
Aryan  and  the  Negro. 

All  mixed  races  are  violent,  incoherent,  incapa 
ble  of  national  government,  revolutionary,  and  are 
on  the  down  grade  of  civilization.  If  this  state 
ment  is  correct  we  must  conclude  that  miscegena 
tion  is  a  sin  against  God  and  a  violation  of  the 
laws  of  nature. 

In  Mexico  the  Spanish,  Indians  and  negroes 
are  mixed.  The  Spanish  ruled  for  a  long  while, 
till  the  mixed  classes  became  numerous  and  revo 
lutionary.  From  the  day  of  mixing  of  consider 
able  numbers  enlightenment  declined,  and  from 
the  day  Mexico  gained  her  independence  till  the 
rule  of  Diaz,  her  people  increased  in  violence, 
cruelty,  revolution;  and  retrograded  in  light  and 
learning.  Now,  that  ablest  of  all  modern  rulers, 
President  Diaz,  by  pursuing  a  wise,  generous,  and 
strong  course  has  made  life  safe  in  his  dominions, 
Immigration  of  the  Caucasian  type  has  poured 
into  the  country,  giving  the  government  to  the 
white  man;  the  negro  and  mulatto  have  disap 
peared  (so  said  Bishop  Keiner)  and  the  Mistizos 
(Spanish  and  Indian)  and  pure  Indians  are  tak 
ing  "  back  seats."  But  it  was  thought  the  negro 


MISCEGENATION  AND  MIXED  RACES        119 

was  in  Mexico  to  stay,  for  there  were  many  there. 
I  suppose  revolution  killed  him  out.  If  he  did  not 
stay  in  Mexico  and  the  Indians  are  not  staying 
in  the  United  States,  will  the  negro  stay  here? 
But  we  are  not  having  revolutions,  and  he  may 
stay. 

The  history  of  Mexico  is  the  history  of  all 
Spanish  America  and  of  Brazil,  except  that  the 
negroes  have  not  yet  everywhere  disappeared. 

All  north  and  northeast  Africa  was  settled  by 
white  people.  Egypt,  Ethiopia,  now  called 
Nubia,  the  Barbary  States  along  the  Mediterra 
nean  coast  in  some  way,  mostly  through  negro 
slavery,  smutted  their  color,  and  have  been  going 
down  since  the  fall  of  Carthage. 

The  Aryans  settled  in  Northern  India  and  in 
their  advancement  south  they  met  with  a  negro 
race  with  straight  hair,  the  most  degraded  of  all 
human  beings,  except,  perhaps,  the  Bosjemens  of 
Africa.  They  lived  without  clothes,  without  mar 
riage,  and  without  shame.  From  these  a  mongrel 
breed  sprang  up,  and  afterward  was  mingled  with 
Mongolians,  and  two  thousand  years  of  retrogres 
sion,  revolutions,  and  misgovernment  have 
resulted. 

Syria,  Persia,  and  all  Western  Asia  from  the 
Indies  to  the  Balkans  in  Europe,  mingled  with 
Mongolians  and  some  mixed  tribes  from  the 


I2O  THE   SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

North,  have  passed  from  being  the  most  enlight 
ened  and  progressive  portion  of  the  world,  many 
parts  being  as  densely  settled  as  Belgium  or  Hol 
land  of  to-day.  They  have  been  sinking  for 
twenty-five  hundred  years,  and  if  they  have  yet 
checked  their  downward  course,  we  are  not  aware 
of  it.  The  mixed  blood  in  most  of  these  is  now 
nearly  eliminated  and  we  may  hoped  for  reforma 
tion,  for  repeopling  the  country  and  again  culti 
vating  the  waste  lands. 

Professor  E.  D.  Blyden,  late  president  of 
Liberia  College,  a  full-blooded  negro,  wrote  a 
gloomy  account  of  the  mulattos  of  Liberia.  He 
said.  u  They  are  inefficient,  die  early,  are  easy 
to  take  cold,  and  of  many  mulattos  sent  to  Li 
beria  to  tone  up  the  blood  about  all  have  disap 
peared." 

The  following  statistics  are  taken  from  The 
Issue,  collated  by  Mr.  A.  H.  Stone  of  Mississippi : 

"  By  the  census  of  1900  there  were  8,833,994 
negroes  in  the  United  States,  87.4  per  cent,  of 
which  are  in  the  13  Southern  States.  In  the  State 
of  Mississippi  there  are  over  800,000  negroes; 
this  is  more  than  all  free  States  and  Territories, 
including  West  Virginia,  together.  If  the  New 
England  States  had  as  large  a  percent,  of  their 
population  negroes,  they  would  have  7^737,836 
of  the  African  race.  The  Northern  States  have 


MISCEGENATION   AND   MIXED   RACES        121 

not  enough  of  the  colored  population  to  consider 
a  race  problem,  yet  they  dictate  the  policy  to  the 
States  that  have  practically  all  the  negroes.  In 
Mississippi  141  per  cent,  are  negroes  (I  suppose 
he  means  141  to  100  whites,  or  about  71  per 
cent.),  and  in  New  York  i.i  per  cent.  There  are 
more  negroes  in  Mississippi  than  there  are  in 
Cape  Colony  or  Natal,  even  with  the  great  Zulu 
land  annexed  to  the  latter;  more  than  in  the 
Transvaal,  more  than  in  Jamaica  and  the  Barba- 
does  combined,  more  than  in  Cuba  and  Porto 
Rico  combined,  more  thanf  in  Hayti  or  Santo 
Domingo. 

"  In  1890  the  negroes  and  mulattos  were  listed 
separately  in  the  census  reports.  It  was  found 
that  where  there  are  the  fewest  colored  people, 
the  largest  per  cent,  of  mulattos  were  found.  In 
the  South  Central  States,  Kentucky,  Tennessee, 
Alabama,  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  Arkansas, 
Texas  and  Oklahoma,  the  mulattos  were  but  14  per 
cent,  of  the  negro  population,  while  in  the  New 
England  group,  they  were  32.7  per  cent.,  in  Miss 
issippi  11.5  per  cent.,  in  Massachusetts  36.3  per 
cent.,  in  Maine  53.8  per  cent.,  in  Michigan  53.8 
per  cent.,  in  Georgia  9.9  per  cent,  in  South  Caro 
lina  9.7  per  cent." 

We  in  the  South  have  often  been  berated  for 
our  rakishness  with  the  negroes,  but  it  seems  the 


122  THE    SOUTHERN   NEGRO 

strongest  abolition  States  believe  in  trying  the 
miscegenation  solution  of  the  race  problem. 

With  the  history  of  the  mixed  races  before  us, 
think  how  deplorable  the  consequences  in  the 
South  would  have  become  if  the  philanthropists 
of  the  North  could  have  succeeded  in  forcing  social 
equality  for  the  negro  upon  the  South  and  the 
miscegenation  of  the  races.  The  mixture  of  fiery 
blood  and  the  hellish  lust  of  opposing  natures 
would  soon  have  wrought  the  ruin  of  one  of  the 
most  moral,  polished  and  cultured  people  on  earth, 
and  caused  a  shudder  of  horror  to  thrill  the  world. 

We  must  now  add  a  few  words  about  the  Far 
Eastern  question.  It  has  been  suggested  that  if 
China  should  wake  up  and  she  and  Japan  should 
unite,  their  hordes  might  overrun  almost  any  part 
of  the  world.  I  am  not  afraid  of  this,  but  we 
stand  in  greater  danger  than  from  the  armies  of 
the  Mongolians. 

If  we  do  not  protect  our  Pacific  coast  from  the 
yellow  immigrants,  in  twenty  years  or  less  a 
million  of  these  Orientals  will  come  to  America 
annually.  European  immigration  to  our  Atlantic 
coast  will  be  a  small  affair  in  comparison  with  it. 
It  will  then  require  only  a  few  decades  to  people 
the  Pacific  States  with  more  yellow  inhabitants 
than  white.  Miscegenation  will  do  the  rest.  The 
apathy  of  the  Far  East  with  the  wild  enlighten- 


MISCEGENATION  AND  MIXED  RACES        123 

ment  and  aggressive  spirit  of  the  West  will  pro 
duce  an  ungovernable,  revolutionary,  independent, 
self-loving  people,  which  will  cost  the  United 
States  ten  times  more  to  keep  them  under  than 
the  whole  Pacific  Coast  will  be  worth.  Next  their 
migrations  would  roll  over  the  Rocky  Mountains 
and  inundate  the  Mississippi  Valley  and  corrupt 
the  blood  of  a  majority  of  the  people — and  per 
haps  bring  about  the  great  battle  in  which  "  the 
blood  shall  flow  to  the  bridle  bits  of  the  horses." 
Think  of  four  hundred  million  of  half-starving 
people  on  the  move  to  the  land  of  plenty  and  not 
checked.  How  long  would  it  take  to  overrun  it? 

I  quote  the  following  from  the  May  number 
of  the  Century  Magazine  of  1908,  written  by 
Prof.  Booker  T.  Washington  on  "Negro 
Homes  " : 

"  The  first  negro  home  that  I  remember  was  a 
log-cabin  about  fourteen  by  sixteen  feet.  It  had 
a  narrow  door  which  hung  on  rusty  worn-out 
hinges.  The  windows  were  mere  openings  in  the 
wall,  protected  by  a  rickety  shutter  [shutters] 
which  was  closed  in  winter,  but  which  ^  usually 
hung  dejectedly  on  uncertain  hinges  against  the 
walls  of  the  house. 

"  Such  a  thing  as  a  glass  window  was  unknown 
to  this  house.  There  was  no  floor,  or  rather,  there 


124  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

was  a  floor,  but  it  was  nothing  more  than  the 
naked  earth.  There  was  only  one  room,  which 
served  as  kitchen,  parlor  and  bedroom  for  a  fam 
ily  of  five,  which  consisted  of  my  mother,  my 
brother,  my  sister,  myself  and  the  cat.  In  this 
cabin  we  all  slept  and  ate,  my  mother  being  the 
cook  on  the  place.  My  own  bed  was  a  pile  of 
rags  on  the  floor  in  one  corner  of  the  room  next 
to  the  fire  place.  It  was  not  until  after  the  eman 
cipation  that  I  enjoyed  for  the  first  time  in  my  life 
the  luxury  of  sleeping  on  a  bed.  It  was  at  times, 
I  suppose,  somewhat  crowded  in  those  narrow 
quarters,  though  I  do  not  remember  having  suf 
fered  on  that  account,  especially  as  the  cabin  was 
pretty  thoroughly  ventilated,  particularly  in  the 
winter,  through  the  wide  openings  between  the 
logs  in  the  walls. 

"  I  mention  these  facts  here  because  the  little 
slaves'  cabin  in  which  I  lived  as  a  child,  and  which 
is  associated  with  all  my  earliest  memories  is  typi 
cal  of  the  places  in  which  the  great  mass  of  the 
negro  people  lived  a  little  more  than  forty  years 
ago;  and  there  are  thousands  of  negro  men  and 
women  living  to-day  in  comfortable  and  well-kept 
homes  who  will  recognize  what  I  have  written  as 
a  good  description  of  the  homes  in  which  they 
were  born  and  reared.  Probably  there  is  no  single 
object  that  so  accurately  represents  and  typifies  the 


MISCEGENATION    AND    MIXED   RACES        125 

mental  and  moral  condition  of  the  larger  propor 
tion  of  the  members  of  any  race  fifty  years  ago 
as  this  same  little  slave  cabin." 

With  regard  to  Prof.  Booker  T.  Washington's 
statement  about  his  own  cabin  and  raising  I  have 
nothing  to  say,  but  as  to  his  remarkable  assertion 
that  this  is  typical  of  the  manner  in  which  slaves  in 
the  South  were  generally  raised  and  treated,  he 
will  not  find  any  believers  among  the  white  popula 
tion  of  the  South  now  living  who  were  raised  be 
fore  1860.  I  have  stated  his  language  to  quote  a 
number  of  old  men  and  they  have  pronounced  it 
false  in  no  unqualified  terms.  I  was  raised  in  a 
section  where  the  negroes  were  about  equal  to  the 
white  people.  I  was  among  negroes,  played  with 
them,  wrestled  with  them,  fought  with  them, 
worked  with  them,  owned  them;  but  never  ate 
with  them  or  slept  with  them.  I  loved  my  negroes 
and  they  loved  me  and  would  have  fought  for 
me. 

White  boys  were  fond  of  going  out  to  negro 
cabins  after  supper  to  hear  the  negroes  talk  and 
tell  tales,  witch  stories,  ghost  stories — Joel  Chand 
ler  Harris  has  told  you  of  many  such.  Many  of 
his  stories  I  heard  when  a  boy  long  before  they 
were  ever  put  in  book  form.  In  those  days  coun 
try  school  boys  were  fond  of  going  home  with  one 
another  and  in  this  way  I  visited  more  than  one 


126  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

hundred  negro  cabins,  and  among  all  these  I  never 
saw  one  without  a  floor,  I  never  saw  one  akin  to 
the  cabin  in  which  Booker  T.  Washington  says 
he  was  reared.  I  traveled  over  nearly  all  the 
counties  in  West  Tennessee  and  saw  much  of  Ten 
nessee,  Mississippi,  Alabama,  Louisiana,  Texas 
and  Arkansas;  I  saw  thousands  of  cabins  and 
never  saw  one  with  a  dirt  floor  or  a  negro  cabin 
akin  to  Prof.  Booker  T.  Washington's.  I  have 
never  found  any  person  who  did  see  one.  It  is 
a  fact  that  in  the  Gulf  States  the  cabins  were  bet 
ter  than  farther  north  where  there  were  fewer 
negroes.  If  a  man  owned  negroes  he  was  able  to 
build  good  cabins.  I  occasionally  find  such  cabins 
now  as  Prof.  Booker  T.  Washington's.  The 
worst  cabins  I  knew  before  1865  were  inhabited 
by  "  poor  white  people " —negroes  never  say 
"  poor  white  trash,"  the  white  man  put  that  in  his 
mouth. 

Wherever  one  would  find  a  man  owning  many 
negroes,  he  would  find  a  row  of  good  cabins, 
usually  framed  with  brick  chimneys  and  glass  win 
dows;  sometimes  they  were  built  of  logs  with  stick 
and  mud  chimneys,  but  were  always  comfortable 
and  had  good  floors,  and  the  inmates  were  re 
quired  to  keep  their  premises  in  a  good  sanitary 
condition.  Slaves  were  valuable  and  their  good 
keeping  was  well  looked  after.  It  was  quite  com- 


MISCEGENATION  AND  MIXED  RACES        127 

mon  in  the  house-wife's  room  to  see  a  little  sick 
negro  sitting  in  the  corner  by  the  fire  in  the  winter 
time,  or  lying  on  a  pallet;  this  was  done  that  the 
child  might  have  better  nursing  than  it  could  get 
in  the  cabin.  It  was  often  remarked  that  miserly, 
hard-fisted  men  were  better  to  their  negroes  than 
to  their  children.  I  knew  some  of  these  myself. 

One  indubitable  evidence  that  the  slaves  were 
well  treated  before  the  war,  is  that  the  negroes 
increased  much  faster  than  the  white  people — 
now  the  white  people  increase  faster  than  the 
negroes.  They  were  more  cheerful  in  slavery 
than  in  freedom  and  much  more  moral — consump 
tion  was  scarcely  known  among  them:  they  were 
immune  from  the  yellow  fever,  and  I  think  they 
were  the  healthiest  people  on  earth  and  had  less  to 
trouble  them.  They  are  now  no  longer  immune 
from  yellow  fever,  and  consumption  is  making 
fearful  ravages  among  them. 

There  never  was  any  large  body  of  people  but 
had  some  cruel  and  unreasonable  individuals 
among  them.  The  slave  owners  were  not  an  ex 
ception;  there  were  some  cruel  masters  and  some 
that  worked  their  negroes  too  hard.  I  knew  one 
so  cruel  that  his  negroes  were  in  the  woods  a  good 
part  of  the  time,  and  his  neighbors  seeing  the  run 
aways  would  not  report  them  to  their  master.  The 
man  was  held  in  contempt  by  all  who  knew  him 


128  THE    SOUTHERN    NEGRO 

— and  so  was  every  man  that  was  cruel  to  his 
slaves,  or  worked  them  too  hard,  or  fed  and 
clothed  them  too  scantily.  But  such  cases  were 
rare,  because,  as  before  said,  the  stingiest  and  the 
most  selfish  men  often  made  the  best  of  masters, 
as  it  was  their  interest  to  be  such.  I  challenge 
the  world  and  all  the  ages  to  find  a  nobler  and 
more  humane  set  of  men  than  the  old  slave 
holders  of  the  South.  The  slaves  dreaded  no 
master  as  much  as  they  did  being  hired  or  sold 
to  a  Yankee — meaning  by  this  term  any  man  from 
the  free  States.  The  reason  was  not  that  the 
Yankee  was  a  bad  man,  but  that  he  expected  as 
much  from  the  negro  as  he  had  been  accustomed 
to  see  hired  labor  in  the  North  perform. 

Prof.  Booker  T.  Washington  gave  pictures  of 
twenty-two  fine  negro  homes  scattered  over  the 
United  States  showing  what  the  negroes  could  do. 
But  he  failed  to  tell  us  how  many  of  these  be 
longed  to  negroes  and  how  many  to  mixed  breeds. 
The  latter  class  represents  the  white  man  as  much 
as  it  does  the  negro,  so  they  are  not  to  be  taken 
into  account  in  reporting  negro  prosperity.  But 
they  were  all  written  up  as  if  they  were  of  pure 
African  descent.  Washington  uses  the  phrase, 
"  my  race,"  when  he  must  mean  the  mixed  breeds 
only.  I  mention  this  to  correct  the  false  reports 
of  negro  prosperity,  for  all  colors  are  classed  as 


MISCEGENATION   AND   MIXED   RACES        129 

Africans,  yet  only  the  pure  African  possesses  the 
pure  African  character,  and  what  the  mulattos 
are  doing  and  how  they  are  progressing)  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  question,  for  they  display 
the  white  man's  enterprise  as  much  as  they  do  the 
negro's. 

If  I  am  not  mistaken  Prof.  Booker  T,  Wash 
ington  was  too  young  in  1861  to  have  any  exten 
sive  knowledge  of  the  condition  of  the  slaves.  I 
doubt  whether  any  reliable  man  of  the  South  of 
mature  years  in  1861  but  what  will  give  an  em 
phatic  denial  of  Prof.  Booker  T.  Washington's 
statement  of  the  condition  of  the  homes  of  the 
slaves,  and  of  their  general  treatment. 


DCT 


